Simi Kamal is Chairperson of the Hisaar Foundation, Pakistan. Educated at the University of Cambridge, she is a leading expert whose work intersects across many disciplines, from the water sector, environment, climate change, food security, to women empowerment, gender equality, inclusive development and poverty alleviation.

Simi is Pakistan’s leading geographer, whose professional career spans over four decades and across many regions from South Asia, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Europe to Africa. Her experience ranges from grassroots institutions and projects to major national and international programs and multi-million-dollar grant programs. She is the founder of several private and nonprofit organizations as well as national and international networks, programs, and initiatives. Kamal’s professional interests include research, analysis, policy, strategy, program development, and implementation.

She is the author and co-author of over 180 research and evaluation reports, and has led over 200 assignments and postings as team leader and lead consultant. In the last 10 years, she has led multi-sector national programs in Pakistan, including the Head of Programs at Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF).

She is the author of numerous handbooks and training modules, several book chapters, and over 450 articles and papers published and presented nationally and internationally. She is a fundraiser and campaigner for human rights, women’s rights, and the rational use of water, and is the recipient of several national and international awards.

Simi was the brains behind Pakistan’s Citizens Water Policy, which kickstarted the conversation for Pakistan’s first National Water Policy (2018). She is also the brains behind the Karachi International Water Conference (KIWC), a biennial event organized in Karachi that attracts the best minds on the water, environment, climate change, and food security from across the world and from all corners of Pakistan.

The sixth iteration of the two-day KIWC begins in Karachi today.

BRResearch (BRR): Why do you believe that water has ceased to be at the heart of climate discourse?

Simi Kamal (SK): During the early 2000s, the discourse over environmental conservation was dominated by various issues related to water such as scarcity, governance, integrated management, and policy responses etc. But since then, a subset of sustainability related themes focused mainly on greenhouse emissions, has completely taken over the limelight and displaced the conversation around water.

The displacement of water from environment and conservation was a result of efforts by private commercial interests, which invested heavily in rebranding themselves under the banner of ‘net zero approaches’ – what is otherwise referred to as ‘greenwashing’.

BRR: Does that mean that the challenges posed by global warming are of lower import than the crises emanating from mismanagement of water?

SK: They are one and the same. The only way to stop global warming is to stop putting more carbon in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the commercial interests have stymied the consensus to keep fossil fuels in the ground and instead, are consumed by greenwashing initiatives such as carbon credits. Moreover, they have also disconnected the mainstream discourse from efforts for water conservation.

A significant majority of experts now believes that the planet is past the stages of ‘mitigation’, and that all energies must now be focused on ‘adaptation’. And adaptation is all about judicious and equitable water use.

The damage to the natural resources and Earth’s atmosphere due to carbon emissions by humans over the last two centuries is now becoming increasingly visible in the form of rising temperatures and extreme weather events across the planet.

But the debate must now shift from carbon to water, as the impact of carbon emission is directly on water resources, whether in the form of melting glaciers, boiling oceans, disturbed hydrological cycles, depletion of groundwater resources, or seawater intrusion etc.

We must go back to the first principles of sustainability: which is conservation. The mantra of conserving the natural resources must once again take center stage. Even if modern economies fully transition to renewable sources of energy, the damage already caused to water resources is irreversible; whether it is the rapid depletion of groundwater tables which has rendered aquifers across Balochistan dry; or the maddening abuse of water for irrigation which caused Aral Sea to dry up in just six decades; or, the insane pollution of sea- and oceans which has made mariculture virtually impossible.

BRR: We are barely one year away from 2025, which is when Pakistan is predicted to reach ‘absolute’ water scarcity. Would you agree that the increased unpredictability of extreme weather events, such as the 2022 monsoon floods where we had too much instead of too little water, is in part responsible for why water-related warnings are no longer able to capture public imagination?

SK: Researchers in Pakistan do not have access to reliable data. In the distant past, WAPDA used to collect and publicly disseminate a lot of useful data; however, the practice has long been abandoned.

But more importantly, even if researchers in the private sector were to make independent efforts to collect primary data, they are forced to obtain tens of NOCs, beginning from municipal and provincial bodies all the way up from the Pakistan Army.

Therefore, it is absurd to make projections that Pakistan would run out of water in X or Y year in absence of good data. We must first rebuild the science of water by collecting the primary data, upon which researchers can build analytics and forecast models that can yield useful information viz. what climate change might have store for us.

Purely based on exogenous models available to us, it is safe to say that for regions such as Pakistan, it is anticipated that the volatility in the weather patterns will become more extreme, and that extreme swings between flood years and drought years will become far more common than in the past.

BRR: Does that mean national efforts to build mega dams such as Bhasha to cushion Pakistanis against droughts are a step in the right direction?

SK: No! The right policy prescription is to place a moratorium on adding infrastructure, especially the ‘mega-kind’. Reservoirs do not only come in the shape of large-scale dams. Hisaar Foundation put out the concept of constructing one million water ponds. These can be built incrementally, at community level, and without any foreign funding. And this is not a novel idea; it has been a traditional practice that provided food and water security across northern subcontinent and large parts of Pakistan for centuries.

For years, we petitioned the ministry of water resources, which showed no interest; until it was finally picked up by the Living Indus initiative, led by the climate change ministry, with the support of UN. Pakistan’s ministry of water resources is in the chokehold of WAPDA, where ideas go to die.

BRR: But is this not a whole-of-government failure?

SK: Partly because over the years, the water ministry has made sure that independent thinkers are not allowed a seat at the table, where real solutions for real people can be presented to the decision-makers. The ministry was also responsible for convening the meeting of the National Water Council under the National Water Policy, 2018. Yet, five years since the policy, no meeting has ever been convened.

BRR: What are your recommendations?

SK: Change can only come when policymakers step out of their silos and listen to citizens-based movements. The entire irrigation system of Indus basin is our asset, but there is a dire need to encourage efficiency and equity in resource use. We must manage and maintain our existing infrastructure, but not add any new infrastructure, and especially discourage any development that is at odds with nature.

Start a national effort to recycle and conserve and gear up the shift towards circular economy. From building a million ponds as natural reservoirs for water storage to harvesting water for domestic and commercial purposes.

Listen to local communities. Do not import expensive technology that does not work such as DHA Cogen. Look towards nature-based solutions that have been part of South Asian tradition.

Enable experts in conducting research by making already available data accessible, and collection of new data possible. Engage with everyone, the polluters, the commercial interests, the policymakers, as well as the security state. Pay heed to local expertise, rather than importing the one-size-fits-all prescriptions of the development partners.

Concluded.