Tando Allahyar, Sindh

A protest rally was organized on Sunday March 23 by Awami Tehreek from Kumbhar Hotel to the Tando Allahyar Press Club against corporate farming, the construction of six new canals, and the amendment to the IRSA Act.

A large number of women and children also participated in the rally, chanting slogans such as “Federal government, make it clear—either the canals go, or Pakistan stays!”, “End corporate farming projects!”, “Repeal the IRSA Act amendment ordinance!”, and “Abolish SIFC!”

Addressing the rally, Awami Tehreek’s Central Coordination Secretary Lal Jarwar, along with Abdul Rahman Samoon, Hanif Sarang, Sindhyani Tehreek’s central leader Advocate Sorath Mangarhar, Advocate Niaz Bharani, farmer leader Abdul Rahman, Mohammad Bachal Samijo, Shumaila Samijo, Sain Bakhsh Jarwar, and other leaders, strongly condemned Punjab’s long-standing exploitation of Sindh’s water resources. They stated that Punjab’s rulers have been stealing Sindh’s water for the past 172 years through sheer force and that they must now be held accountable for this historical water theft. They accused Punjabi rulers of both India and Pakistan of conspiring together to divert the waters of the Indus River, leaving Sindh without drinking water while Punjab continues to construct flood canals. They warned that Punjab is now building nine new canals, further worsening the crisis.

The leaders criticized the Sindh government for failing to take a clear stance on the canal issue and accused it of taking no action to reclaim Sindh’s stolen water from the past 170 years. They further alleged that the Sindh government, led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), is acting as a subordinate to Maryam Nawaz’s federal government. Dismissing PPP’s announced protests against the canals as mere political theatrics, they claimed that the party is deceiving the Sindhi people with fake demonstrations to save its political face. They accused PPP of exploiting Sindhi nationalism to push Bilawal Bhutto Zardari towards the Prime Minister’s seat while selling off Sindh’s rivers, lands, and resources for its political gain.

The protest leaders further alleged that PPP handed over Sindh’s resources to the federal government in exchange for securing the presidency and is now looking to completely sell out Sindh to form a federal government. They claimed that the federal government, led by Nawaz League, is standing on PPP’s shoulders and that Shehbaz Sharif’s government, facilitated by PPP, has blocked Sindh’s water supply. The protesters demanded the restoration of Sindh’s water share according to the 1945 Water Accord.

Read: No Dam or Canal Accepted 

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The post Protesters Demand 1945 Water Accord Implementation first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zoffen Ebrahim

Gulab Shah, 45, is having sleepless nights. He and his family are worried about their imminent migration from their village in Jhaloo to a major city in Pakistan, thanks to the continued ingress of sea water inland.

“That is all that I and my brothers discuss day and night,” he told IPS over telephone from his village which lies near Kharo Chan, in Sindh province’s Thatta district.

He and his family also talk about what it “will mean living among strangers, in a strange place; adopting an unfamiliar lifestyle; losing culture and identity”.

Of the nearly 6,000 acres of land that Shah’s father inherited, over 2,500 acres have slowly been swallowed by the sea over the last 70 years.

And even though they still have enough land to sell to enable them to set up their home in a city, “there are no buyers!” Shah proclaimed.

“Nobody wants to buy land that they know is going to be submerged soon,” he said.

And if they stay, they do not have enough farm hands to work on their land. “Every year more and more people, mostly farmhands, are moving out of here as there is less work for them,” Shah explained.

For millions of years, the River Indus sustained the marshes, the 17 creeks, miles of swamps, mangrove forests and the mudflats along with the various estuarine habitats in the fan-shaped Indus delta, before reaching its final destination and emptying into the Arabian Sea. It marks a journey of 3,000 km from the Himalayas.

Today this Ramsar Site, a wetland of international importance, is parched and dying a slow death.

The dams and barrages on the river sucked the fresh river and stopped it from reaching the delta. It also resulted in a reduction of sediment deposition, giving the sea a perfect opportunity to ingress into the land.

Climate change has had an impact too here. The rains are unpredictable now, water levels don’t increase and conversely over the years there has been an increased demand for water for both agricultural activities and a growing population.

If the delta gets 10 million acre feet (MAF) consistently over the 12 months, or 5,000 cubic feet per seconds daily, as promised through the provincial water apportionment Accord of 1991, the delta would thrive.

However, that is not the case. “Along the way, from the mountains to the sea, there is shortage, pilferage coupled with losses due to an ageing distribution system,” explained Usman Tanveer, the deputy commissioner or principal representative of the provincial government in the district of Thatta.

“We require a well regulated water management system from the time the water leaves the mountains till it reaches the Arabian Sea,” he told IPS.

He pointed out that as a specialized subject, water needs to be looked into more scientifically. For example, said Tanveer, “First and foremost, we need proper research and experts to be able to plan for future water needs and this includes coming up with finding optimal conservation solutions, natural sites if small dams have to be built (instead of frowning upon whenever the D [dam] word is brought up).”

“We need to have a legal framework in place so thefts are deterred, and most importantly, an integrated mechanism to collect water cess from every user,” he concluded.

A 2018 report by United States-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCASW) at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET), Jamshoro, using historical maps and field research, noted that back in 1833 the delta spanned some 12,900 square kilometers (sq. km); today it was a mere 1,000 sq km.

“The human impact on the environment, the change in the natural flow of the river, resulting in reduction in sediment deposition, and sea-level ingress and climate change have resulted in the contraction of the delta,” said Dr. Altaf Ali Siyal, who heads the Integrated Water Resources Management Department (IWRM) at USPCASW, and is the principal author of the delta report. The study concluded the delta today constitutes just 8 to 10 percent of its original expanse.

But many living in the delta believed it would began to die when man reined in the mighty Indus. The construction of the Sukkur barrage (1923 to 1932) by the British, followed by Kotri barrage in 1955 and Guddu in 1962, squeezed the life out of the once-verdant delta.

Prior to this Sindh province received 150 MAF of water annually, now it is less than one-tenth of this at only 10 MAF annually. “It would be even better if it receives between 25 and 35 MAF water so that it can return to its past grandeur,” Siyal told.

Take the case of the Shah’s land.

“Till 10 years back about 400 acres were still cultivable,” said Shah. However, this year, they were able to cultivate just 150 acres. “Acute water shortages on the one hand and increased salinity on the other, has made it impossible to till all of our land,” he explained.

Until the 1990s his family grew the “sweetest bananas” and the finest vegetables on over 400 acres of land. They had led a prosperous life.

All of that is lost now.

Two years back, because of acute shortage of water, Shah and his brothers decided to grow the heart-shaped green betel leaf, locally called paan, over 12 acres of land.

But Dr. Hassan Abbas, an expert in hydrology and water resources has both long term and short term solutions to revive the delta.

“One would be to rejuvenate the natural course of the river the way United Kingdom, the United States and even Australia are by dismantling dams and adopting the free flowing river model,” he told IPS.

“A free flowing model is one where water, silt, and other natural materials can move along unobstructed. But more importantly, it’s one by which the ecological integrity of the entire river system is maintained as a whole,” explained Abbas.

The other, more imminent, solution is to address the way farmers irrigate. “We need to make agriculture water-efficient without compromising on our yield. The water saved thus can be allowed to flow back into its course and regenerate the delta.”

He has a pilot in mind that can build the confidence and capacity of the farmers when it comes to water-efficient farming, and at the same time, stopping the supply of water in that area by blocking one canal.

“See if it is socially and economically acceptable to the farmers and the environmental benefits accrued,” he said, adding, “If there is a positive side, more canals can be closed.”

However, a quick and cost-effective manner of addressing water shortage, in cities like Karachi, said Abbas, was through exploiting the riverine corridors of active floodplains.

“The Indus has 6.5 km of flood plain on either side which has sweet sand under which is the cleanest mineral water you can get. Most of the big cities are not more than 3km away from the river bed. All that needs to be done is to pump that water up from the depth of 300 to 400 feet using, say solar energy, and supply it to the cities through pipes,” explained the hydrologist.

But what about the Shah’s village in the delta?

“It is far, about 200 km from the river,” agreed Abbas, conceding the people in the delta urgently needed to be supplied with drinking water.

“It would require a much longer pipeline, but would still be cheaper to transport the same water that way,” he said.

According to him, there is anywhere from 350 to 380 MAF of water available in the riverine aquifer. “We Pakistanis need at the most 15 or a maximum of 20 MAF/year, (this is excluding water for agriculture) to meet our needs. It is a much cheaper option at two to three billion dollars than a dam costing 17 billion dollars!”

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Courtesy: Relief Web/IPS (Originally published in August 2019)

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