UN Report Exposes Water Governance Failures Plaguing the Poor in Nations like Pakistan
By Mohammad Ehsan Leghari
In a landmark initiative, Pedro Arrojo Agudo, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, has released a July 2025 report (A/80/117) that reframes freshwater as a “common good” essential for human survival and societal cohesion, rather than a commodity ripe for exploitation (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025).
Drawing on frameworks like the 2023 Water Justice Manifesto—endorsed by over 500 social movements—and the FAO’s Global Dialogue on Water Tenure, the report critiques technocratic, market-driven models that prioritize profit over people (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, n.d.). It champions democratic governance rooted in human rights principles: sustainability, participation, accountability, non-discrimination, equality, empowerment, and legality, augmented by commons-oriented tenets like equity, responsibility, efficiency, and priority.
This “state-of-the-art” document integrates Indigenous ecocentric views with anthropocentric rights, emphasizing a hydro-social approach under “One Health.” It warns against privatization, commodification, and financialization, which erode affordability and equity, and urges a “water transition” for climate resilience—restoring ecosystems as “natural technology” powered by solar energy (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025). As global temperatures rise, the report stresses nested governance from local communities to river basins, respecting customary rights and ensuring women’s equal participation (UNICEF, n.d.).
For developing countries, where governance failures perpetuate a crisis affecting billions— predominantly the poor— the report is a stark rebuke. Despite 961 million gaining safely managed drinking water since 2015, more than two billion people (one in four globally) still lack it as of 2025, with rural-urban divides exacerbating inequalities (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025). In low-income nations, pollution from mining and agriculture creates “sacrifice zones,” poisoning communities and warranting ecocide classification under an expanded Rome Statute (Abid et al., 2022). The crisis isn’t scarcity but mismanagement: over-allocation to agribusiness, ignored customary rights, and weak institutions favoring elites.
Arrojo Agudo details how colonial legacies and neoliberal policies marginalize Indigenous and peasant tenure, advocating integration into public domains with free, prior, informed consent. He highlights equity in concessions, precautionary reserves for droughts, and rejection of water markets that “patrimonialize” resources. Financialization via public-private partnerships (PPPs) hikes tariffs, undermining rights, while blended finance models like the World Bank’s 2024 framework prioritize “bankable projects” over social needs (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025).
In arid regions like Pakistan, climate change amplifies vulnerabilities: by 2025, 1.8 billion face absolute scarcity, with erratic weather hitting the poor hardest (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, n.d.). Governance “schizophrenia”—treating surface water as public but groundwater as private—leads to overexploitation, destroying river bases and quality. Subsidies skew to the wealthy (1.5–2% of GDP in developing nations benefiting the top 20%), while cut-offs plague the vulnerable (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025). Participation remains tokenistic, excluding women who bear 70% of collection burdens globally, and accountability falters amid corruption (UNICEF, n.d.).
This traps communities in poverty: unsafe water causes health epidemics, reducing productivity and entrenching marginalization (Abid et al., 2022). Arrojo Agudo’s principles—sustainability via ecological flows, participation through multi-criteria decisions, and equity via progressive tariffs—offer escape routes, but require ditching commodification for rights-based models (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025).
Pakistan exemplifies this dire scenario, where systemic lapses leave over 100 million— mostly rural poor— without safe water amid the Indus Basin’s abundance (UNICEF, 2023). As of late 2025, only 36–50% have safely managed supplies (and we must understand that these safely managed supplies are not completely safe from impurities), with contamination from sewage, pesticides, and arsenic rampant (Abid et al., 2022). Per capita availability has dropped to 660 cubic meters, mainly caused by unchecked population growth, signaling increased scarcity (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, n.d.).
The 2022 floods left over 10 million without safe water, and seawater intrusion still devastates the Indus delta, collapsing farming and fishing (Al Jazeera, 2025; UNICEF, 2023). This repeated in 2025 with almost 7 million people affected, most of them marginalized and poor. The drinking water and sanitation crisis again surfaced strongly. These floods unpacked many dimensions of Arrojo Agudo’s warnings: as floodwaters spread everywhere, canal command tail ends remained dry—mostly belonging to the politically poor and socially marginalized. The drinking water debacle, both qualitative and quantitative, merged into one.
The October 2025 suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty by India, weaponising water, added another transboundary flashpoint that no one is ready to address at the basin level.
Meanwhile, solar-powered tube wells, while boosting irrigation, are depleting groundwater catastrophically—expanding rice and other crops cultivation but accelerating salinization (Reuters, 2025). Governance mirrors the report’s critiques: centralized, technocratic systems favor elite irrigators (80% of usage in report; over 90% in Pakistan), ignoring domestic priorities and ecosystems (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025).
The concept of “Elite Irrigators” is about a powerful class of water users, such as large-scale landowners, political figures, or corporate entities, who exert disproportionate control over shared irrigation resources and governance systems—is fundamentally a challenge of elite capture (Meinzen-Dick, 1997). This process systematically diverts community benefits to a privileged few (Meinzen-Dick, 1997). These elites leverage political connections, economic power, and often their strategic location at the head reaches of canal systems to secure a larger, more reliable water supply, often to the detriment of smaller, marginalized farmers at the tail ends (Wade, 1988). The Special Rapporteur’s report substantiates this dynamic by highlighting how “powerful corporations and productive sectors” hold robust concessionary rights that function like quasi-property rights, often supported by heavy subsidies, and how the “influence of powerful private corporations in public institutions” erodes the concept of public interest. This systemic inequity is further evidenced by “land- and water-grabbing processes” and the “prevalence of large users” within participatory water governance bodies, ensuring that water is frequently controlled for “economic gain” rather than human rights and equity. This manipulation not only exacerbates rural poverty and social conflict but also undermines the sustainable operation of shared infrastructure by discouraging collective maintenance (Ostrom, 1990).
Aquifer overexploitation in Punjab violates sustainability, while pollution from intensive farming destroys water quality, leading to “water mining” in Balochistan (Abid et al., 2022). Customary rights in tribal areas are eroded, and women’s burdens—collecting from distant, unsafe sources—fuel gender inequities (UNICEF, 2025).
Financialization exacerbates issues: tanker mafias in Karachi have turned water delivery into a money-minting business, sustained by a “don’t go for sustainable solution” governance strategy—echoing Arrojo Agudo’s warnings about social costs. Subsidies benefit the rich, while floods expose poor planning. Climate vulnerability ranks Pakistan among the most threatened nations, with unpredictable monsoons and glacial melt, yet adaptation still lags (Abid et al., 2022).
The report’s “water transition” could transform this: restore aquifers as reserves, wetlands for flood control, and promote sponge cities (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025). Equity demands progressive tariffs, targeted subsidies, and community partnerships like Colombia’s, while pollution must be criminalized as ecocide (Abid et al., 2022).
Yet, without reform, Pakistan’s crisis deepens. As Arrojo Agudo notes, it’s a democratic failure: prioritize life over profit, integrate customary models, and build resilience. Global solidarity must aid climate refugees, as urged by Michelle Bachelet, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (World Health Organization and UNICEF, 2025).
For Pakistan and developing peers, this report isn’t advisory—it’s urgent. Implementing its vision could fulfill SDG 6, turning thirst into justice. But inaction risks catastrophe, as billions remain parched amid governance voids (UNICEF, 2025).
References
Abid, M. et al. (2022) Climate change and water crises in Pakistan: implications on water quality, waterborne diseases and coping strategies. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 10. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9708371/.
Al Jazeera (2025) Water has surrounded us: The slow death of Pakistan’s Indus delta. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/8/5/water-has-surrounded-us-the-slow-death-of-pakistans-indus-delta.
Arrojo Agudo, P. (2025). Human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation (A/80/117). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, transmitted by a Note by the Secretary-General to the General Assembly. United Nations.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (n.d.) Water scarcity. Available at: https://www.fao.org/land-water/water/water-scarcity/en/.
Meinzen-Dick, R. (1997). Groundwater markets in Pakistan: Institutional development and productivity impacts. Agricultural Economics, 16(3), 209-219.
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reuters (2025) Solar-powered farming is digging Pakistan into a water catastrophe. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/solar-powered-farming-is-digging-pakistan-into-water-catastrophe-2025-10-02/.
UNICEF (2023) More than 10 million people, including children, living in Pakistan’s flood-affected areas still lack access to safe drinking water. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/more-10-million-people-including-children-living-pakistans-flood-affected-areas.
UNICEF (n.d.) Water scarcity. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/wash/water-scarcity.
UNICEF (2025) Fast facts: 1 in 4 people globally still lack access to safe drinking water. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/fast-facts-1-4-people-globally-still-lack-access-safe-drinking-water-who-unicef.
Wade, R. (1988). Village Republics: Economic Conditions for Collective Action in South India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
World Health Organization and UNICEF (2025) 1 in 4 people globally still lack access to safe drinking water – WHO, UNICEF. Available at: https://www.who.int/news/item/26-08-2025-1-in-4-people-globally-still-lack-access-to-safe-drinking-water—who–unicef.
World Health Organization and UNICEF (2025) Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000–2024: special focus on inequalities. Available at: https://data.unicef.org/resources/jmp-report-2025/
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Mohammad Ehsan Leghari is Member (Sindh), Indus River System Authority, and former Managing Director, SIDA.
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