Water has become the most crucial limiting factor for Pakistan’s agricultural growth. Despite the availability of millions of acres of barren land, particularly in Balochistan and Punjab, the country’s cultivated area could not be expanded in the past due to the scarcity of surface and quality groundwater.

In Pakistan, water scarcity is an increasingly important issue, resulting from a complex interplay of inadequate water storage capacity, significant conveyance losses across water channels, and poor water-use efficiency — crop produced (in kilogram or in dollars) per unit of irrigation water used — at farm level, primarily due to outdated irrigation practices like flood irrigation.

If we look at the supply side, the country’s two largest water resources — glaciers and underground water — are depleting at an alarming rate. The ongoing rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers due to rising temperatures may cause a greater incidence of floods in the short term. However, in the long run, this will result in severe water shortages once the glaciers have significantly shrunk.

Pakistan’s water shortage capacity is critically low to get the benefits of increased water flow due to climate change. Over time, the country’s water storage capacity has gradually declined from 16.26 million acre-feet (MAF) to 13.68 MAF. As a result, the country has only a 30-day water carryover capacity as of 2021, which is in stark contrast to India’s 170 days and Egypt’s 700 days.

With low........

© Dawn Business