Arooj Zulfiqar

Pakistan needs to chalk out an effective and feasible plan to preserve its water resources and stop the depletion of underground water, WealthPKreports. According to an expert, water is one of the basic necessities of life and Pakistan is blessed with an abundance of water resources. However, the country’s water resources are depleting with the passage of time. It is feared that the entire world will face an acute water shortage in the coming years.

Saiqa Imran, the deputy director of the Pakistan Council of Research and Water Reservoirs (PCRWR), told WealthPK that the country was feared to face an acute shortage of fresh water. “The quantity of fresh water is quite limited in the country,” she added. According to her, climate change is the primary cause of the depletion of water resources. She said that the shortage of water triggered concerns about the future availability of water for the world’s exponentially rising population.

Saiqa Imran said that in most cases, the water table was constantly going down as a result of the frequent pumping of water from the ground. “With a growing world population, the more we pump water from the ground at a rapid rate, the harder it becomes to get the amount of water we need because we pump the groundwater faster than it can be replenished,” she added. She said that inefficient water distribution and mismanagement were the main causes of the water shortage.

“Pakistan has one of the largest contiguous irrigation systems in the world where more than 93% of water is used by the agriculture sector, 5% by the domestic sector and 2% by the industrial sector,” said the expert. She said that domestic and industrial sectors would use 15% more water by 2025 than their current consumption. She said that the agriculture sector was the biggest user of water as modern irrigation techniques were not adopted in Pakistan but its contribution to the national economy was declining with the passage of time.

Saiqa Imran said that the world’s average storage capacity reached 40% but Pakistan could conserve only up to 10% of its annual river water due to insufficient space. “People have turned to use underground water as a result of the shortage of the most essential commodity. The indiscriminate over-pumping in the cities in the absence of regulatory bodies has also led to the depletion of groundwater,” she added. According to her, there is a dire need to devise a proper pricing mechanism for water usage in any sector.

She said that incentives should also be in place to encourage people to use water efficiently. The expert said that the country could take a variety of technical and management measures to conserve water at all levels, reduce irrigation losses, encourage farmers to adopt more efficient irrigation methods by creating a regulatory framework, launch licensing water, and implement integrated water resource management. “Under the principle of private sector participation and optimal water pricing, the policymakers should rethink water policy to encourage wastewater recycling,” Saiqa Imran told WealthPK.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk