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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Wilson Center’s Michael Kugelman Finds the Real Culprit in Pakistan’s Water Shortage

    July 28, 2010 By Wilson Center Staff
    Excerpt from Dawn:

    ON Jan 15, 2006, the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) inaugurated its new fountain – the Rs320m lighted harbour structure that spews seawater hundreds of feet into the air.

    Also on this day – as on most others in Karachi – several million gallons of the city’s water supply were lost to leakage, some hundred million gallons of raw sewage oozed into the sea, and scores of Karachiites failed to secure clean water.

    Over the next few years, the fountain jet would produce a powerful and relentless stream of water high above Karachi. Meanwhile, down below, tens of thousands of the city’s masses would die from unsafe water.

    After several fountain parts were stolen in 2008, the KPT quickly made the necessary repairs and re-launched what it deems “an extravaganza of light and water”.

    In an era of rampant resource shortages, boasting about such extravagance demonstrates questionable judgment. So, too, does the willingness to lavish millions of rupees on a giant water fountain, and then to repair it fast and furiously – while across Karachi and the nation as a whole, drinking water and sanitation projects are heavily underfunded and water infrastructure stagnates in disrepair.

    Continue reading on Dawn.

    For more on Pakistan’s water crisis, see the Wilson Center report, “Running on Empty.”

    Photo Credit: Adapted from UN map of South Asia, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
    Topics: demography, development, economics, funding, India, Pakistan, population, poverty, water
    • Jason Trump

      In what ways should Pakistan go about improving its water usage to ease the stress level currently? Is a general infrastructure overhaul needed, or is it more of a matter of getting priorities straight and allocating the water properly?

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/08467259827528678494 Michael

      Jason–good questions. Before the floods, better priorities and better allocations would have been sufficient. But now, the entire infrastructure must be overhauled because so much of it has been destroyed. New canals and pipes and dams will need to be re-built, but this time they need to be properly maintained instead of neglected from the start. In general, there needs to be more emphasis on demand-side solutions (revolving around better resource management and conservation) and less focus on knee-jerk responses on the supply side (such as recourse to large dams, which can be expensive and easily break down). I suggest you check out pp 20-24 of the book I edited on Pakistan's water crisis: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/ASIA_090422_Running%20on%20Empty_web.pdf. It offers some recommendations that respond to your questions.

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