Old Targets, New Deadlines

Pakistan has a new roadmap for water security. The Planning Commission’s National Water Security framework under URAAN Pakistan is ambitious: by 2029, it aims to raise farm-gate water availability from 58. 3 to 79 million acre-feet, increase storage from 15. 3 to 23. 5 MAF and improve irrigation efficiency from 40 to 70 per cent. Its indicative federal financing requirement is around $18 billion over FY2027-36. Much of this is welcome. But before setting another round of targets, we should establish where we stand against the ones we set eight years ago. In April 2018, Pakistan adopted its first National Water Policy. Not since the 1991 Water Apportionment Accord had the federation and provinces agreed on water in this way. After successive rounds of consultation, the Council of Common Interests approved it unanimously, and the prime minister and all four chief ministers signed the Pakistan Water Charter. The policy also carried numbers. Storage was to increase. Conveyance losses were to fall by a third. Water-use efficiency was to improve by at least 30 per cent. Real-time monitoring of river flows, including telemetry, was to be completed before the end of 2021. Water was to receive at least 10 per cent of Federal PSDP in 2018-19, rising gradually to 20 per cent by 2030. Eight years have passed. Let us return to those numbers. PM approves duty-free livestock imports for specialised farms to boost exports A problem appears before measurement can even begin. Some of the new framework’s starting numbers need explaining. Its water balance begins with 104 MAF of canal diversions, subtracts 46. 7 MAF in conveyance and farm losses, and arrives at 58. 3 MAF at the farm gate. But 104 minus 46. 7 is 57. 3. One MAF has appeared in the arithmetic. More important is the 104 itself. The official IRSA record does not support treating 104 MAF as representative of current canal withdrawals. Average annual withdrawals over the post-Accord series are about 93. 5 MAF. In 2024-25, they were 89. 9 MAF. If 104 MAF is an older benchmark, design availability or another accounting concept, we should be told. If it represents current withdrawals, it must be reconciled with the record. Otherwise, the promise to raise farm-gate availability to 79 MAF starts from a baseline that is itself in question. Makkah Alliance activates collective deterrence The 46. 7 MAF described as losses deserves the same care. Water leaking from a canal is not necessarily water lost to the Indus Basin. Some recharges groundwater that farmers then pump through tubewells. In saline areas, seepage can cause waterlogging and salinity. Canal lining can improve supplies, especially at the tail. But stopping seepage does not automatically create an equivalent quantity of new water for the basin. Before promising another 20. 7 MAF at the farm gate, we need to establish how much can genuinely be saved and how much simply shifts between the surface and the aquifer. A T20 match is set to begin, KP CM warns Centre Storage is no clearer. Recent official figures put the live capacity of Tarbela, Mangla and Chashma at 13. 168 MAF. Other official statements have used around 13. 5 MAF. The new framework starts from 15. 3 MAF, apparently using a broader inventory of reservoirs. None of these figures is necessarily wrong. But if we cannot agree on what the 15. 3 contains, how will anyone know in 2029 whether the target was achieved? The older commitments need the same scrutiny. Take telemetry. The 2018 policy required real-time monitoring of river flows before the end of 2021. It was missed. A new system covering 27 key sites is now under implementation. That is welcome. But if missing a target carries no consequence, the next target becomes another date in another document. We can count projects: watercourses lined, hectares covered, contracts awarded. What we cannot yet produce is a consistent national account showing how much of the promised reduction in conveyance losses was achieved, or whether water-use efficiency improved by 30 per cent. The 2018 targets were outcomes, not counts of projects. Saudi-led coalition strikes hundreds of Houthis targets I have seen how difficult that transition is. During my tenure as Punjab’s Irrigation Minister, we officially adopted the Punjab Water Policy 2018 and enacted the Punjab Water Act 2019 and the Punjab Irrigation, Drainage and Rivers Act 2023, replacing a law dating from 1873. Getting a policy approved is only the first hurdle. Then come legislation, rules, institutions, budgets and enforcement. Someone has to measure whether any of it worked. The National Water Policy anticipated this. It created a National Water Council chaired by the prime minister, with all four chief ministers among its members. The Council was to meet annually and its Steering Committee twice a year, with periodic implementation reviews going to the CCI. The Council held its first meeting in October 2018, but the annual review mechanism never became institutionalised. The government’s own implementation framework records five attempts to convene the Steering Committee during 2019. All five were postponed. UN Chief Antonio Guterres arrives in Pakistan today Imagine if the prime minister and four chief ministers had sat down every year with the targets in front of them. Where is the telemetry? How much storage has been added? Have losses fallen? Why is the development allocation not moving towards 20 per cent? Someone would have had to answer. The problem was not getting everyone to agree. We did that. The harder part was keeping the water sector high enough on the political agenda for that agreement to shape budgets and decisions year after year. A new motorway or announcement of a dam attracts attention. Routine canal maintenance, a recalibrated gauge or a drain cleaned before the monsoon does not. Anyone who has run an irrigation department knows these unremarkable jobs are what keep the system working. Then there is money. I have sat on both sides of that table, asking for resources as Irrigation Minister and later weighing competing demands as Punjab’s Finance Minister. Budgets strip away rhetoric. The 2018 policy committed at least 10 per cent of Federal PSDP to water, rising gradually to 20 per cent by 2030. In 2026-27, the federal allocation for water resources, excluding hydropower, is about Rs74. 9 billion in a Rs1 trillion programme. That is roughly 7. 5 per cent. We were supposed to be moving from 10 towards 20. We are at 7. 5. The new framework now identifies around $18 billion of indicative federal financing. How much will come from the PSDP, provincial budgets, development partners or climate finance? Which projects already have financing? Who pays to operate and maintain them once built? The 2018 policy also had something the new framework does not yet have: formal provincial ownership. The CCI approved it and the chief ministers signed the Water Charter. The new framework records consultation but carries no equivalent endorsement. That matters because much of what it proposes must be done by the provinces. Irrigation is a provincial responsibility. So is groundwater management. A national investment plan can identify projects. It cannot manufacture interprovincial agreement. None of this argues against new thinking on water. We need it. But before deciding on another set of targets, do something simpler. Take the measurable commitments of the 2018 National Water Policy. Put the 2018 baseline in one column and the verified 2026 position beside it. Add what was allocated, released and completed. Name the institution responsible. Put that sheet before the National Water Council and the CCI. Publish it. If some 2018 targets have been overtaken by events, change them. Where we succeeded, record it. Where the data do not exist, admit it. And where we simply did not do what we agreed to do, say so. Put the 2018 targets and the 2026 numbers on the same page. Then let us decide what we promise next. Mohsin LeghariThe writer is a former Senator, MPA, MNA, and former Minister of Irrigation Punjab.

Read full story on The Nation