Prime Minister Imran Khan’s appeal to Pakistani diaspora to donate 1000 dollars per person to the Dam Fund setup by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, to be merged with the Prime Minister Dam Fund, found a very welcome chord in the hearts and minds of the people of this country, increasingly aware of the dire water situation. He further stated “if we do not start constructing dams now, the coming generations will be facing serious problems.” One can marvel at the Prime Minister’s astuteness in not setting up a separate dam fund after consultation with the Chief Justice, as was the norm in the past when setting up flood relief funds, and this decision may gain him considerable political mileage. Imran Khan during his address revealed that 180 crore rupees have already been parked in the Chief Justice dam fund and even though there is still a long way to go to generate the amount required to build the two dams there is a pervasive feeling that construction would begin soon.

Water sector experts both within and outside Pakistan have referred to the previous three to four administrations’ failure to take appropriate mitigating measures to deal with the impending water crisis, projected decades ago, as ‘criminal negligence’. Dire warnings based on recent research undertaken by United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Pakistan Council of Research and Water Resources reveal that the country would dry up in seven years time - by 2025. The International Monetary Fund ranks Pakistan as the third most water-stressed country in the world with per capita water availability declining from 1500 cubic meters in 2009 to 1017 cubic meters at present, close to the scarcity threshold of 1000 cubic meters.

During his address, Imran Khan directly invoked his own integrity, displayed and widely acknowledged in donations made by overseas Pakistanis for Shaukat Khanum cancer hospitals, when requesting donations for building the two dams, vowing that, “I assure you that I will protect your money.” He indicated that as the money would be in dollars it could be used to retire the external debt of the country, thereby reducing pressure on the government to seek assistance from the IMF and/or from other bilateral sources with prohibitive conditions which, in turn, would free up domestic resources for investment in the construction of the dams. His appeal has no doubt raised expectations within the Pakistani public that he will succeed where all others failed, not only in terms of prioritizing public expenditure appropriately - the largest budgetary allocation made by the PML-N administration was sadly on building roads - but also in spreading the perception that he would not tolerate corruption and would keep a vigilant eye on the financing of the dam projects. Even Khan’s worst critics concede that his intentions are well meaning.

However, building dams is just one-step in the right direction. Water at present is under-priced accounting for the recovery of a mere one quarter of the required annual operating and maintenance costs (including lining canals). This in turn explains why Pakistan has the world’s highest water intensity rate (defined as the amount of water in cubic meters that is being used per unit of Gross Domestic Product). Additionally, keeping the agriculture sector that consumes the bulk of the annual available surface water minimally taxed needs a revisit. To add to domestic issues is the fact that Punjab is accused of unfairly getting the lion’s share and one would hope that after 27 years where the ground realities have changed immeasurably a new water accord may be negotiated.

And finally, given that Pakistan is a lower riparian country our acrimonious relations especially with India (and less so with Afghanistan) have enhanced our water problems. Here too previous governments delayed taking action under the World Bank-brokered Indus Water Treaty that accounts for India’s dam building on the Western rivers allocated to Pakistan. India claims that Pakistan is wasting water, a claim that was reiterated recently during the meeting of the two countries’ water commissioners, and this charge needs to be addressed. The Prime Minister has made a good start and one would hope that his administration begins to deal with all water-related issues – domestic as well as regional.