WATER POLITICS

Growing concerns over a potential water crisis from the building of a new canal have sparked opposition across Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh, with the local assembly passing a resolution against it in mid-March. This has raised fear that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which has Sindh as its stronghold, could leave the governing coalition of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif over the issue.

In February, the federal government launched an ambitious agriculture project, the Green Pakistan Initiative, to enhance food security through corporate farming, with the Pakistan army taking the lead.

Under this initiative, six canals will be constructed, including one in the Cholistan desert. The government will invest $750 million to build the 176-kilometer-long canal to irrigate 1.2 million acres of barren lands in the desert within the Punjab province.

The government claims that the Cholistan canal will use flood water for four months a year and river water from Punjab in the remaining months. River water flows downstream from the north in Punjab to Sindh province in the south.

However, on March 13, the Sindh provincial assembly passed a resolution against the construction of this canal.

Politicians and rights activists in Sindh allege that the new canal will ultimately eat up the share of water in their province, which was determined by the Water Apportionment Accord of 1991, an agreement between the provinces of the country.

If less water flows from the Indus River into the Arabian Sea, there would likely be a big impact on the Indus River Delta, which is home to over a million people, animals and mangrove forests, said water rights activists.

“Diverting more river flows away from the delta will hasten land erosion, which has significant environmental consequences as well as implications for migration from areas with rising tides coming in,” Erum Sattar, a lecturer who researches the Indus at Tufts University in the U.S., told Nikkei Asia.

Shahab Usto, a civil rights lawyer based in Karachi, warns that water availability could decrease by 30% to 40% in the coming years.

“In Sindh, where 70% of the economy depends on agriculture, the [new canal] project threatens livelihoods and can fuel unrest,” he said. “If this canal is built forcefully, without consensus, it could even push the country toward internal conflict.”

Experts said that the plan to build a new canal to irrigate a barren desert is impractical and completely unsustainable.

“Punjab [government] insists that the Cholistan canal will function as a flood canal, but floods are unreliable. Since 2010, the Indus River system has not experienced any major floods,” Naseer Memon, a climate change consultant, told Nikkei.

“In such a situation, with a huge water deficit already existing, there is simply no surplus water available to support large-scale corporate farming projects,” he added.

Usto, the water rights lawyer, said that all hydrologists have opposed this canal project because it’s neither viable nor sustainable. “Even India’s Indira Gandhi Canal, just across the border from Pakistan’s Cholistan, failed under similar circumstances,” he said.

There is also a question about the $750 million cost of this new canal project.

“Given the government’s track record of not completing projects on time, alongside frequent time and cost overruns, the reliability of these cost estimates is highly questionable,” Hassan Abbas, a water expert based in Islamabad, told Nikkei.

Rights activists in Sindh argue that the federal government initiated the canal project without seeking approval from Council of Common Interests (CCI), which is a constitutional body responsible for resolving inter-provincial disputes.

Usto said that any dispute over water distribution should be taken to the CCI, which then takes actions to resolve it.

Memon, the climate change consultant, said that the relationship between Sindh and the federal government is likely to be strained due to the canal controversy.

“Sindh is the stronghold of the Pakistan People’s Party. If the federal government does not reverse its decision [on new canals], there is a strong possibility that the PPP may eventually part ways with the coalition government of Shehbaz Sharif,” Memon told Nikkei.