Pakistan among top 10 countries facing severe water crisis

Pakistan is estimated to be in the top 10 list of the world’s countries facing water scarcity, said Munir Akram, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) while emphasising the water issues that plague the country.

He made these comments while speaking about the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6, which deals with the issue of clean water. Highlighting the water issues, he said that Pakistan is on the top when it comes to water scarcity, reported ARY News.

Stressing on the cause of water issues, the UN representative cited climate change, floods and drought as the reason. An appropriate framework around which to structure the themes of the dialogues can be formed through its five accelerants of Financing, Data and Information, Capacity Development, Innovation and Governance, said the UN envoy.

Munir Akram, speaking about the water governance issues, added that the transboundary water cooperation has a key role crucial role when it comes to supporting wider regional integration, peace and sustainable development, as well as in tackling regional security challenges and in supporting climate change adaptation.

“Currently, transboundary waters account for 60 per cent of the world’s freshwater flows. 153 countries have territory within at least one of the 286 transboundary river and lake basins and 592 transboundary aquifer systems,” the statement read, as per the news channel.

It added: “With most of the world’s water resources being shared between two or more countries, the need for transboundary cooperation assumes even greater urgency with rising water scarcity.”

This comes at a time when Pakistan’s national water supplies have dipped substantially low and are facing severe strain as despite an early onset of summer in mid-March and April getting hotter than usual. It is because the snow melting process in mountainous and hilly areas has not picked up the pace.

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Pakistan’s water supply level is much below last year’s levels. It is also below average supplies of the last five or 10 years. On Saturday, the country received 90,000 cusecs in all its rivers against the last 10-year average of 1,37,700 cusecs, a drop of 27.73 per cent.

This crisis has forced Pakistan to kick off the Kharif season with a shortage of nearly 40 per cent in both of its water-producing systems - 30 per cent in Indus and 10 per cent in the Jhelum arm, reported Dawn.

• Pakistan