ago. Official y, population growth now stands at 2.2 per cent a year – which would seem to be a serious underestimate.
Pakistan’s inability to bring this rate down more quickly reflects state weakness, social conservatism, lack of education (above al among women) and the ability of the religious parties to play on popular prejudices. Since Ayub Khan in the late 1950s, no Pakistani government has dared to promote family planning seriously, and the reduction that has occurred has happened because of socio-economic change and urbanization, not through state action.
The huge youth bulge making its way through the Pakistani population means that this population wil continue to grow steeply for a long time to come (in 2008, 42 per cent of the population was estimated as under the age of fourteen). If present trends continue, then by the middle of the twenty-first century, according to World Bank projections, Pakistan may have as many as 335 mil ion people.16
This is far too many people for Pakistan’s available water resources to support, unless the efficiency of water use can be radical y improved. If the old Indian economy used to be described as ‘a gamble on the monsoon’, then the entire Pakistani state can be described as ‘a gamble on the Indus’ – and climate change means that over the next century this may be a gamble against increasingly long odds. The capricious power of water in this area is demonstrated by the remains of numerous cities – starting with those of the Indus Val ey civilization 4,000 years ago – that have been either abandoned because rivers have changed their course, or been washed away by floods, as so many towns and vil ages were by the great floods of 2010.
At an average of 240 mm of rainfal per year, Pakistan is one of the most natural y arid of the world’s heavily populated states. Without the Indus river system and the canals flowing from it, most, even of Punjab, would be semi-desert and scrub-forest (cal ed ‘jungle’ in Pakistan) – as it was before the British began their great irrigation projects.
This is apparent if you fly over the country. Once the five great rivers of Punjab and the Kabul river flowing from Afghanistan have paid their tribute to the Indus, the vast majority of cultivated land in the southern end of Punjab and the whole of Sindh is only what can be irrigated from the Indus. Beyond these lands, al is brown, yel ow and grey, dotted with the occasional oasis provided by natural springs or more often tube-wel s. Only 24 per cent of Pakistan’s land area is cultivated – the great majority through man-made irrigation systems. The rest is pastoral land, or uninhabited: desert, semi-desert, and mountain.
Chronic over-use, however, means that many of the natural springs have dried up, and the water table is dropping so rapidly in many areas that the tube-wel s wil also eventual y fol ow them into extinction.
That wil leave the Indus once again; and in the furore surrounding the debunking of the exaggerated claim that the glaciers feeding the Indus wil disappear by 2035, it has been forgotten that they are nonetheless melting; and if they disappear a century or two later, the effects on Pakistan wil be equal y dire, if no serious action is taken in the meantime radical y to improve Pakistan’s conservation and efficient use of water.
If the floods of 2010 are a harbinger of a long-term pattern of increased monsoon rains, this on the other hand would potential y be of great benefit to Pakistan – but only potential y, because to harness them for agriculture requires both a vastly improved storage and distribution infrastructure, and radical measures to stop deforestation in the mountains and to replant deforested areas. Otherwise, increased rainfal wil risk more catastrophes like that of 2010, with the water rushing off the deforested hil sides in the north to swamp first the val eys and then the plains. It should be added, though, that an absolutely
Pakistan’s inability to bring this rate down more quickly reflects state weakness, social conservatism, lack of education (above al among women) and the ability of the religious parties to play on popular prejudices. Since Ayub Khan in the late 1950s, no Pakistani government has dared to promote family planning seriously, and the reduction that has occurred has happened because of socio-economic change and urbanization, not through state action.
The huge youth bulge making its way through the Pakistani population means that this population wil continue to grow steeply for a long time to come (in 2008, 42 per cent of the population was estimated as under the age of fourteen). If present trends continue, then by the middle of the twenty-first century, according to World Bank projections, Pakistan may have as many as 335 mil ion people.16
This is far too many people for Pakistan’s available water resources to support, unless the efficiency of water use can be radical y improved. If the old Indian economy used to be described as ‘a gamble on the monsoon’, then the entire Pakistani state can be described as ‘a gamble on the Indus’ – and climate change means that over the next century this may be a gamble against increasingly long odds. The capricious power of water in this area is demonstrated by the remains of numerous cities – starting with those of the Indus Val ey civilization 4,000 years ago – that have been either abandoned because rivers have changed their course, or been washed away by floods, as so many towns and vil ages were by the great floods of 2010.
At an average of 240 mm of rainfal per year, Pakistan is one of the most natural y arid of the world’s heavily populated states. Without the Indus river system and the canals flowing from it, most, even of Punjab, would be semi-desert and scrub-forest (cal ed ‘jungle’ in Pakistan) – as it was before the British began their great irrigation projects.
This is apparent if you fly over the country. Once the five great rivers of Punjab and the Kabul river flowing from Afghanistan have paid their tribute to the Indus, the vast majority of cultivated land in the southern end of Punjab and the whole of Sindh is only what can be irrigated from the Indus. Beyond these lands, al is brown, yel ow and grey, dotted with the occasional oasis provided by natural springs or more often tube-wel s. Only 24 per cent of Pakistan’s land area is cultivated – the great majority through man-made irrigation systems. The rest is pastoral land, or uninhabited: desert, semi-desert, and mountain.
Chronic over-use, however, means that many of the natural springs have dried up, and the water table is dropping so rapidly in many areas that the tube-wel s wil also eventual y fol ow them into extinction.
That wil leave the Indus once again; and in the furore surrounding the debunking of the exaggerated claim that the glaciers feeding the Indus wil disappear by 2035, it has been forgotten that they are nonetheless melting; and if they disappear a century or two later, the effects on Pakistan wil be equal y dire, if no serious action is taken in the meantime radical y to improve Pakistan’s conservation and efficient use of water.
If the floods of 2010 are a harbinger of a long-term pattern of increased monsoon rains, this on the other hand would potential y be of great benefit to Pakistan – but only potential y, because to harness them for agriculture requires both a vastly improved storage and distribution infrastructure, and radical measures to stop deforestation in the mountains and to replant deforested areas. Otherwise, increased rainfal wil risk more catastrophes like that of 2010, with the water rushing off the deforested hil sides in the north to swamp first the val eys and then the plains. It should be added, though, that an absolutely
Similar Books
