However, the country only has a water storage capacity of 16 MAF.
In reality, Pakistan has more water than its current needs, but it hasn’t been able to utilise it efficiently.
Since we didn’t make any plans to conserve them, we now have to import natural gas.
The first step should be to conserve water resources.
Around 95 percent of water from the Indus Basin is directed towards agriculture even though we require not more than 30 percent of the amount that is currently being used for this purpose.
At least 70 percent of this water – 110 MAF – has been wasted, given the total volume of outputs from our current agricultural practices.
We need to articulate a national perspective to execute the vision.
We don’t seem to have an overarching policy framework to knit together these divergent views into a constructive national narrative that could help build a national consensus on water issues.
The cynical debate around the Kalabagh Dam shows that our national imagination doesn’t go beyond dam-specific concerns to consider questions of governance and the structural issues of the water crisis.
The next article will explore the alternatives to the conventional wisdom about the water crisis – especially the governance issues related to water politics in Pakistan.