An entirely new unified water law is on the anvil to govern the water sector in Sindh. The idea is to run the sector more effectively and efficiently, and to address, institutionally, the fast-emerging challenges of disaster mitigation, climate change, and environmental issues.

The draft of the new law is under preparation, primarily at the Sindh Irrigation Department (SID). It would be a broader legal instrument to regulate water-related components, from canal commands to drainage, groundwater aquifers, and wetlands. It was being drafted in the light of the Sindh Water and Agricultural Transformation (SWAT) project, a multi-million-dollar World Bank (WB) funded project that is already underway.

The new water law aims to merge the over 150-year-old, colonial-era Sindh Irrigation Act 1879 and Sindh Water Management Ordinance (SWMO) 2002. This would also eventually decide the fate of the Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority (SIDA), which was an offshoot of SWMO 2002.

The SWMO was introduced under WB-led intervention in Sindh in the shape of SIDA, established to promote a participatory irrigation system by ensuring farmer-led elected set-ups in the canal command areas of each of Sindh’s three barrages. The ordinance had also substituted the Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority (SIDA) Act 1997.

A new provincial law aims to merge century-old irrigation rules into a single framework to tackle climate change and ease management

Since then, two parallel irrigation systems have existed in Sindh. SIDA then produced the Farmers Organisation (FO) and the Area Water Board (AWBs) for the regulation of........

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