Takht-e-Nasrati
in northern Pakistan was once known for its lush greenery. But over the past 10
years local people say life has become very different in this area of Karak
district, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Tubewells have dried up, forcing residents to
dig deeper in search of freshwater. “This [year] we found water at a depth of
225 metres,” said Sarmad Khattak, a local resident. His 1.6 hectares of land
have been barren since 2013, with rains erratic and insufficient while wells have
run dry.
Groundwater
across Pakistan’s northwestern province is being used at an unsustainable rate,
government officials have said.
“Groundwater
depletion is happening throughout Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. However, it is severe in
southern districts,” said Irfan Rasheed, chief engineer at the provincial
government’s Public Health Engineering Department.
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Afsar
Khan, the deputy director of the climate change unit within Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa’s Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), echoed Rasheed’s sentiments, stating that the
water found below the earth’s surface is often too saline to drink now, with
freshwater too deep to extract. In 2014, Khan said, the provincial government
declared five districts out of 34 –
Dir Lower, Dera Ismail Khan, Karak, Lakki Marwat and Tank – as hotspots of
drinking water
scarcity. Four of these are in the south of the province.
The
last comprehensive
study of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s groundwater was in 1988, when the
province was still called the North-West Frontier Province and the area
previously known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas had not been
incorporated into it. No further comprehensive study has been undertaken since.
The
Third Pole requested data on groundwater levels, locations and extraction rates
from the nine government departments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that deal with water
extraction and management, from the provincial to the district level. All said
they lacked data on how fast the water table is dropping, citing a lack of
funds and equipment.
Despite
a lack of comprehensive data, recent district-level announcements indicate the
scale of the problem:
·
An
appeal to the public in Swat to reduce water use was made in June this year.
Speaking at a press conference Shaida Muhammad Khan, head of Water and Sanitation Services
Company Swat (a public sector company that manages water in Swat),
stated that the northern district faces dropping groundwater due to drought and
high temperatures.
·
A
similar appeal was also issued by Bajaur’s
District Water Management Department in June.
·
A
2019 study by
the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) found that over the
previous four to five years, the water table in Mohmand and Khyber districts
had dropped by more than 60 metres.
Citing reports by the Pakistan Meteorological Department,
as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s EPA has no weather-monitoring stations and records of
its own, Khan said that extreme heatwaves and droughts have led to increased water
extraction and depletion of the water table.
In theory, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is water-abundant
On paper, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has
abundant water resources other than groundwater, such as surface water. Under
the 1991 Water
Apportionment Accord, the province was allocated 8.78 million acre-feet
(MAF) of the waters of the Indus River. But according to the provincial
government, a lack of infrastructure to transport water to where it is needed
means Khyber Pakhtunkhwa underutilises its allocation, using less
than 6 MAF. As a result, people access water from tubewells, pumping out
groundwater. The province extracts 4.2
MAF of groundwater a year for irrigation and domestic purposes,
according to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Planning and Development Department.
“Groundwater is extracted for
irrigation throughout the world, but they know the potential of the resource
and have strategies to recharge aquifers that we lack,” said Mehboob Alam, a
hydrologist who is general manager projects for water and sanitation services
in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Alam said scientific mapping,
using both satellite and ground-based data, is urgently needed to reverse the
groundwater crisis.
“We extract far more [groundwater]
than we need,” said Yasin Wazir, director-general for soil and water
conservation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, describing how “irregular urbanisation,
centuries-old irrigation methods and non-implementation of policies are taking
a toll on groundwater table”.
Solar-powered tubewells intensify groundwater extraction
In 2019, the Ministry of National
Food Security and Research approved the
solarisation of 700 tubewells, among other initiatives such as building ponds
and building watersheds. While the latter can help to recharge groundwater,
solar-powered pumps have made it cheaper to extract more groundwater.
Now, in response to rising
energy costs, the number of solar-powered pumps is likely to grow. There
are plans to solarise 30,000 grid-connected tubewells across the country,
officials at the Planning and Development Department told The Third Pole. In
addition, experts told The Third Pole, there is no federal and provincial-level
policy to regulate new tubewells in consideration of groundwater shortage and
other environmental concerns.
“A 12.5 horsepower solar tubewell
extracts 35,000 gallons of water per day, which is 1.5 cusecs per month. It is
alarming enough when compared to the recharge rate,” said Dr Shahid Iqbal, a
regional researcher on water modelling at non-profit research organisation the
International Water Management Institute.
Mohammad Akmal, an agronomist at
the University of Agriculture in Peshawar, pointed out that the real concern
around solarised tubewells is the lack of regulation. “In the absence of policy
and modern irrigation techniques, these [solar-powered] tubewells would extract
water all day long, as the existing ones have been doing, and take an immense
toll on the already stressed resource,” he said.
Unplanned migration has hit Peshawar’s groundwater hard
Experts from the Public Health
Engineering Department, municipalities, and water and sanitation companies
stressed to The Third Pole that agriculture is
the major user of water in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as in much of South Asia.
However, they said, the province’s growing population and urbanisation are also
significant causes of groundwater depletion in cities.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a high total
fertility rate. At 4.0 as of 2017, it remains much higher than the
replacement rate of 2.1, and is significantly higher than Pakistan’s overall
fertility rate of 3.4. The government has pointed
out that this means increased demand for water.
15 metres
Drop in water
table across Peshawar district over 30 years
With greater opportunities in urban
areas, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has seen high levels of rural-to-urban migration. The
capital Peshawar has
grown from just under 1 million people in 1998 to 2.3 million in 2017,
with the population density increasing seven-fold between 1972 and 2017 – from
about 218 people per square kilometre to about 1,566 people.
The Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa Water Act in 2020 banned private wells to protect the
water table, but with Peshawar dependent on groundwater and the law not
enforced, they are commonly used – in addition to the Peshawar district’s
1,400 public tubewells. Researchers have
found that across the Peshawar district the water table has dropped by
15 metres in 30 years.
“We lack climate-resilient planning
and infrastructure,” said Wazir, the director-general for soil and water
conservation.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa authorities wake up to situation
In April 2018, Pakistan passed its
first National
Water Policy. The federal government called the water crisis a
“thunderbolt” and asked the provinces to take steps to properly manage their
resources. In response, in 2020, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government brought in
water and climate change policies and passed the Water Act.
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