The Indus river, Pakistan’s major water source for drinking and agriculture, is so overused that fishermen and farmers are being forced to migrate as local authorities battle over water rights.
The river once allowed Pakistan to feed itself and produce enough of a surplus to sustain a lucrative trade in rice to the Gulf states. But a series of grandiose schemes on the river has so damaged the water flow that Pakistan is forced to import ever more grain to survive.
Farmers are switching from rice to cotton because it requires less irrigation, but this is not enough to solve the problem. The World Bank has intervened to try to get farmers to pay market rates for water in a bid to reduce its use, so far without success.
The Indus is fed by the glaciers of southern Tibet. Plenty of water flows in the river at Pakistan’s border, but the situation becomes increasingly desperate as the river runs hundreds of kilometres further south.
The fishermen of Keti Bundar in the delta, said to be the oldest inhabitants of the Indus valley, have seen the most rapid deterioration of the river. They have been forced to move time and again in search of fresh water. Now they are poised to migrate again because the once-productive 600 000ha delta cannot provide them with a living.
Keti Bundar is a small town of about 3 000 people, 150km south of Karachi in Sindh province. It was once a bustling port, but people there are now poor and malnourished.
Twenty years ago Beer Jat lived on the Khobar, one of the branches of the Indus in the delta. He cultivated paddy rice and fished, but the salt water contaminated the river and the land and he had to migrate. He will soon have to migrate again.
Farmers grew rice in Keti Bundar and traders would take the surplus to the coastal belt of India and the Persian Gulf states in exchange for goods before the dams and barrages were built upstream.
The large-scale harnessing of waters from the Indus began as early as 1890, when the Punjab irrigation system was built and used the four major eastern tributaries of the 3 000km river for perennial irrigation.
Since then successive schemes have reduced the flow to the delta, increasing the ingress of salt water. All these developmental measures adversely affected the lives and livelihoods of farmers, fishermen and graziers.
Once rich in biodiversity, the Indus delta has slowly been dying because no fresh water flows into it.
Akhtar Hai, a senior economist at the University of Karachi, says the delta was once a major exporter of fish, but over-exploitation, lack of rain and the intrusion of sea water has led to a rapid decline.
There are fears that the acute shortage of irrigation water will not only destroy the agrarian economy of Pakistan but may also lead to more border disputes with India and to interprovincial wars.
Official statistics show that farmers are shifting from water-intensive rice to cotton. Yields of wheat, a staple crop, have been dropping for 10 years. — Â