Pakistan is the world’s fourth-largest user of groundwater, extracting about 65 cubic kilometres of groundwater per year against a natural recharge rate of only 55 cubic kilometres. This massive deficit is causing water tables to fall at an alarming rate, with cities like Lahore losing about a metre of groundwater each year. While overpopulation is the obvious contributor, an estimated 1.5 million unregulated tubewells and other water management policy failures are also pushing the country toward an irreversible crisis.
Over 80% of the rural population relies on unsafe drinking water sources, including nearly 60 million people who are exposed to arsenic contamination. Meanwhile, the agri sector consumes 90% of the country’s water and wastes a significant amount of that due to deep inefficiencies, such as the incomprehensible focus on water-intensive crops like sugarcane and rice, supported by distorted electricity subsidies and water pricing — thereby recovering only a fraction of operational costs. The political power of the people who control the production and processing of these crops also makes it impossible to force a change in sowing priorities.
There have been some bright spots on the innovation front — a demonstration well in Islamabad’s Kachnar Park, for instance, channeled 1.9 million gallons of rainwater back into the aquifer during a single monsoon season and brought several boreholes back to life. While the experiment deserves to be replicated, it is not universally applicable and only works as part of a more holistic plan. Until that plan is clearly laid out, we will continue straddling the line between crisis and catastrophe.