Water Crisis in Pakistan: Manifestation, Causes and the Way Forward

Nazam Maqbool
Additional contact information
Nazam Maqbool: Pakistan Institute of Development Economics

No 2022:60, PIDE Knowledge Brief from Pakistan Institute of Development Economics

Abstract: Water scarcity is a frightening situation that is already happening in Pakistan. The country ranks 14 among the 17 ‘extremely high water risk’ countries of the world, a list that includes hot and dry countries like Saudi Arabia.[2] Over 80 percent of the total population in the country faces ‘severe water scarcity’ for at least one month of the year.[3] In addition to surface water, Pakistan’s groundwater resources—the last resort of water supply—are severely overdrawn, mainly to supply water for irrigation. If the situation remains unchanged, the whole country may face ‘water scarcity’ by 2025. The situation is strategically more complicated, as Pakistan is the lower riparian country to India and 78 percent of its water inflows from therein.[4] Moreover, only two-thirds of available water is being utilised while one-third of the water is either lost or discharged into the sea.[5]

Keywords: Water Crisis; Pakistan; Manifestation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 8 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://pide.org.pk/wp-content/uploads/kb-060-wate ... -the-way-forward.pdf First Version, 2022 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pid:kbrief:2022:60

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PIDE Knowledge Brief from Pakistan Institute of Development Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Khurram Iqbal ().