Worsening water woes

By all means, the recent lull in power outages appears to be transient at best. The authorities ignored the fundamental issues; and in esolving the crisis with a meek liquidity injection, they sounded much like Charlie Chaplin administering LSD to a bleeding patient. Recent power fiasco has been attributed to a host of factors. Structural issues, like the circular debt and the clichéd mismanagement, have always been there. Another factor - no less potent than the often mentioned ones, yet the least discussed - was the considerable drop in hydel power generation during this whole saga. In the aftermath of heavy monsoon rainfall, one might assume that dams must have largely replenished, and hence ask as to what led to the sudden fall in hydel power. It is estimated that over 90 percent of Pakistans available water supplies are used for irrigating arable lands. To manage a 10 percent anticipated water shortage during the 2011-12 Rabi crop season, IRSA decided on September 30 to reduce the release of water from Tarbela and Mangla dams meant for hydel generation by 25 percent. As a result, hydel power didn add much to the national power grid since then. What water shortage; one would ask. Where did the flood waters go; another might wonder. Into the deep blue sea they went, sir! As per IRSA estimates, Pakistans water supplies are around 145 million acre feet (maf) per annum. It is appalling that every year, over 20 percent of this water goes to waste and finds its way into the Arabian Sea due to inadequate water reservoirs. Water experts suggest that at least 55 maf of flood water landed into the sea last year due to storage constraints. Value of one maf of water is considered worth $2 billion. Authorities clearly preferred agricultural water needs to those of the power sector which is heavily skewed towards costly thermal power generation. The share of hydel power in total energy mix, currently just under a third of total power generation, has been declining since 2007. As things stand, it may not improve much; rather worsen in the near-to-medium term. Firstly, water supplies are shrinking. FAO estimates that Pakistans per capita water availability has plummeted from about 5,000 cubic meters in the early 1950s to less than 1,500 cubic meters in 2011. On this indicator, Pakistan ranks dead last in a list of 26 Asian countries. The Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington - based think-tank, released a report on Pakistans water crisis in 2009, noting that "(perhaps) the most powerful accelerant of Pakistans water crisis is global warming. Many glaciers of the western Himalayas are already thinning by up to a meter per year. Once the glaciers have melted, river flows are expected to decrease dramatically". In addition, there is friction over the quantity of water released into Pakistan from upstream rivers in the Indian-held Kashmir. India is building reservoirs and starting hydro-power projects on sites such as Kishanganga and Baghlihar - all alongside those river channels in the disputed Kashmir territory where Pakistans water originates from. Secondly, Pakistan is fast losing its existing water storage capacity, which has been reduced to 12 maf, or roughly 8 percent of total supplies. As per international standards, water storage capacity should be at least 40-50 percent of the water inflows. Thirdly, there is little headway on building new reservoirs. Multi-billion dollar projects, like Diamer-Bhasha dam and Kalabagh dam, are in limbo, owing to a fiscal crunch and a lack of political consensus, respectively. Lastly, as policymakers remain fixated on building large dams, the management and maintenance of existing water channels stays on the backburner. The Woodrow Wilson Center report also found out that compared to the 8 maf water generation expected from the $12.6 billion Diamer-Bhasha dam; much more water, 76 maf, would be freed up simply by properly repairing and maintaining existing canal systems. Amid all this, enhanced hydel power generation maybe a distant reality, as Pakistans water economics seems to be heading the wrong way. The sooner political consensus is developed and financial space created for building adequate water reservoirs, the better it will be for countrys economic, food and social security.