Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

With heavy electricity crisis on one side and jubiliation on the the prospects of finding iron, copper etc reserves on the other side, there is another crisis that can appear anytime. i.e. Water

Not that water is really abundant in most of the cities/villages in Pakistan, but considering the details given here it seems like we are just on the brink of a major debacle.

I remember few days back I said we need more dams and a couple of posters yelled back we dont. So ya lets keep it all gets fixed on its own :slight_smile:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/world/asia/pakistan-braces-for-major-water-shortages.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

Pakistan Braces for Major Water Shortages

By SALMAN MASOODFEB. 12, 2015

Photo

A girl collecting water for her family at a slum on the outskirts of Islamabad. CreditFaisal Mahmood/Reuters

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Energy-starved Pakistanis, their economy battered by chronic fuel and electricity shortages, may soon have to contend with a new resource crisis: major water shortages, the Pakistani government warned this week.
A combination of global climate change and local waste and mismanagement have led to an alarmingly rapid depletion of Pakistan’s water supply, said the minister for water and energy, Khawaja Muhammad Asif.
“Under the present situation, in the next six to seven years, Pakistan can be a water-starved country,” Mr. Asif said in an interview, echoing a warning that he first issued at a news conference in Lahore this week.
The prospect of a major water crisis in Pakistan, even if several years distant, offers a stark reminder of a growing challenge in other poor and densely populated countries that are vulnerable to global climate change.

In Pakistan, it poses a further challenge to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose government has already come under sharp criticism for failing to end the country’s electricity crisis. In some rural areas, heavy rationing has meant that as little as four hours of electricity a day is available.
In the interview, Mr. Asif said the government had started to bring the electricity crisis under control, and predicted a return to normal supply by 2017. But energy experts are less confident that such a turnaround is possible, given how long and complex the problem has proved.
Now, the country’s water supply looms as a resource challenge, intensified by Pakistan’s lasting infrastructure and management problems.
Agriculture is a cornerstone of the Pakistani economy. The 2,000-mile-long Indus River, which rises in the Himalayas and spans the country, feeds a vast network of irrigation canals that line fields producing wheat, vegetables and cotton, all major sources of foreign currency. In the north, hydroelectricpower stations are a cornerstone of the creaking power system.
A combination of melting glaciers, decreasing rainfall and chronic mismanagement by successive governments has put that water supply in danger, experts say.
In a report published in 2013, the Asian Development Bankdescribed Pakistan as one of the most “water-stressed” countries in the world, with a water availability of 1,000 cubic meters per person per year — a fivefold drop since independence in 1947, and about the same level as drought-stricken Ethiopia.
“It is a very serious situation,” said Pervaiz Amir, country director for thePakistan Water Partnership. “I feel it is going to be more serious than the recent oil shortages.”
Resources shortages have climbed to the top of the political agenda in recent years. Fuel shortages last month, for which government officials blamed mismanagement by the national oil company, caused lengthy lines outside fuel stations that embarrassed the government at a time of low global oil prices.
Mr. Sharif’s government was already grappling with the seemingly intractable electricity crisis, which regularly causes blackouts of 10 hours a day even in major cities. And Mr. Sharif has been visibly distracted by grueling political duels, both with the opposition politician Imran Khan, who accuses him of stealing the 2013 election, and with powerful military leaders who have undermined his authority in key areas.
Mr. Asif, the water and energy minister, said the government had started to turn the corner. But he acknowledged that the country’s resource problems were, to a large degree, endemic. “There is a national habit of extravagance,” he said, noting that it extended across resource areas, whether gas, electricity or water.
“I will be very careful not to use the word ‘drought,’ but we are water stressed right now, and slowly, we are moving to be a water-starved country,” he said.
Evidence of chronic water shortages have been painfully evident in some parts of Pakistan in recent years. A drought caused by erratic rainfall in Tharparkar, a desert area in southern Sindh Province, caused a humanitarian emergency in the region last year.
“The frequency of monsoon rains has decreased but their intensity has increased,” said Mr. Amir of the Pakistan Water Partnership. “That means more water stress, particularly in winters.”
Water is also tied to nationalist, even jihadist, politics in Pakistan. For years, religious conservatives and Islamist militants have accused rival India, where the Indus River system rises, of constricting Pakistan’s water supply.
Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the militant group that carried out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, Lashkar-e-Taiba, regularly rails against Indian “water terrorism” during public rallies.
Mr. Asif said that contrary to such claims, India was not building reservoirs on rivers that flow into Pakistan. “We will never let it happen,” he said, citing the Indus Water Treaty, an agreement between the two countries that was brokered by the World Bank and signed in the 1960s.
One major culprit in Pakistan’s looming water crisis, experts say, is the country’s inadequate water storage facilities. In India, about one-third of the water supply is stored in reservoirs, compared with just 9 percent in Pakistan, Mr. Amir said.

“**We built our last dam 46 years ago,” he said. “India has built 4,000 dams, with another 150 in the pipeline.”
**
Experts say the country’s chaotic policies are hurting its image in the eyes of Western donors who could help alleviate the mounting resource crises.
“The biggest looming crisis is of governance, not water — which could make this country unlivable in the next few years,” said Arshad H. Abbasi, a water and energy expert with the Sustainable Development and Policy Institute, a research group based in Islamabad.
Declan Walsh contributed reporting from London.

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

Sher ik wari ferrrrrrrrr

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

dude.
God forbade water shortage hit pakistan. :(
Its not a joke... even for people who have survived electricity+petrol+natural_gass shortage.

That is like Game over thing.

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

eik aur darya ka samna tha Muneer mujh ko
main eik darya k paar utra tu main nai daikha

:chai:

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

Don't worry. Gold, iron and Cu mines have been discovered in the tind of N$, soon you will see rivers of honey and milk flow in whole country :D

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

Just like it happened in era of Pee Pee Pee

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

Former PPP government never claimed such lies which are the domain of N$, $$ and Registani Panchhi :D

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

If Ganjay goes to Sahara desert there will be shortage of sand there :D

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

Pakistan has had a drinking water shortage since 2005. Just like India. Its a problem through out the third world. You can't fix it because drinking water sources are finite and unless we find some way to create drinking water through other than natural sources this shortage won't correct itself.

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

agar pani nahi hay tu log coke kyon nahi pee laitay

Re: Another resource crisis in line: Water shortage

so the job of the current ministers is just to announce the next crises’s? if thats the case then i am sure most of us here can work as ministers… :chai: