STAFF REPORT IBD: Pakistan is facing growing water scarcity, as well as institutional and political obstacles to improving the availability of water in the heavily agricultural country. These water problems are creating security problems and political disputes. There is a plethora of problems that the country faces but the hidden enemy is the security problems which will arise with the countrys worsening water situation which comes from floods and monsoon.
By 2030, Pakistan is expected to move from being water stressed to being water scarce, as the Food and Agricultural Organization, a United Nations entity, defines it. Sindh and Punjab provinces are at odds over the dam construction on the critically important Indus River.
Groundwater depletion in arid Baluchistan is creating tension and hurting small farmers in a province wracked by extreme violence, as well as water shortages in a poor settlement in Karachi has already led to protests, violent rioting and bombings.
Leaders of the state should pay more attention to the worsening water issue in Pakistan, a country that hardly needs additional sources of internal conflict and look at solutions that can help us in the years to come.