Water Crisis in Pakistan

There are various factors that have contributed to the water crisis in Pakistan, such as an increase in the population in urban areas, agriculture, overpopulation, and mismanagement.

Water Crisis and Access to Clean Drinking Water

Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a huge outcry about the water crisis and access to clean drinking water. A lot of resources and time are being invested in scientific missions to discover water on other planets.

The desperation to find more sources of water accentuates the necessity of water in human life. Water is a very vital source of life. As science discovered that life on Earth began in water and kept evolving in the water. After 3 billion years, life returned to the earth.

Water an Essential Part of Life

Though life was able to maintain itself outside of water, it remained an essential part of it. Humans have made a lot of progress, but we are still dependent on water. Water makes up 70% of the body, and it is the most abundant molecule that exists within our body.

Life Without Water

Not just humans, but every living organism needs water to sustain life. Without water, life is impossible. A person can survive without food for forty days, but he will barely survive a week without water, such is the requirement for water for the human body.

Water Modern Civilization

Water is the hallmark of modern civilization. Besides biological requirements, water is an important need in the domestic, public, and economic spheres of society.

In the wake of capitalism, water made its way into the political sphere as well. Oceans are gateways for transporting commodities and people from one place to another. Countries with warm waters are considered to have the advantage of their strategic locations.

Great wars have been fought to gain access to warm waters. For instance, it is a widely held belief in academia and policy-making that the Soviet Union attacked Afghanistan to access warm waters (1993).

Effects

It is clear that we need to change the way we use water. There is fundamentally everything wrong with the way this precious resource is being used, and climate change, water pollution, water-borne diseases, and water scarcity are the pointers towards the intricacy of the issue.

Pakistan ranks 37 among the countries which have acute water stress, which includes corrosion of fresh water means. The quality and quantity are both worsening day by day.

According to the recent categorization of the World Water Resource Institute, Pakistan will face an extreme water crisis if it does not take the necessary measures. Pakistan has also been listed among the top 10 countries where most of the population does not have access to safe drinking water.

In the developing world, the ratio of people suffering from water-borne diseases is comparatively high. Six out of ten major diseases are caused by contaminated water and sanitation problems. Diarrhea, Hookworm Schistosomiasis, Ascaris, and Dracunculiasis, mainly caused by infectious and viral pathogens contaminating water and food, lead to morbidity and disability and can also cause death.

Another very serious water-borne disease is Trachoma—caused by a bacterium and leads to blindness. According to WHO’s 2019 report on drinking water, approximately 829,000 people, of which 297,000 are children under the age of 5, die every year due to diarrhea.

The cause of diarrhea is contaminated drinking water and unhygienic surroundings. Although diarrhea is a disease that can be easily prevented, children and adults could be saved if the risk factor is eliminated.

Waterborne diseases are primarily spread through contaminated water, usually through the excretion of animals and humans. Both humans and animals can be victims of the disease or be carriers.

Using contaminated water for cooking, washing, bathing, or even inhaling its drops can cause a severe kind of infection in the human body. A normal person having 6o kg weight must consume at least 2 liters of water daily.

This is the standard ratio to measure exposure to contaminated water and the possible harm and intensity of this exposure. Although water consumption rate varies from person to person.

Agriculture was the main source of Pakistan’s revenue generation. Now Pakistan is facing a serious agricultural crisis as we are unable to produce the required food due to the water crisis.

Only if climate change didn’t reduce the ratio of rainfall and global warming had not started melting glaciers, would we be able to grow and export food at a massive level.

As Khan and Javed argue in their study, accessibility of basic needs such as water can solve many other socio-economic problems of a developing and striving country. Good health means more energy for work, a strong labor force, and less expenditure on health.

Causes

In his study on the use of water in villages of Pakistan, Lerebours found that 50% of the village population gets drinking water from hand-pumps and that a great number of the rural and urban populations get groundwater through municipal water supply means (2017).

His subject city was Saline and he found that the main source of municipal water in Saline is irrigation canals and groundwater.

The fundamental problem lies in the fact that there is poor resource management of water use. When we take water either from groundwater sources, the sea, or rivers, we almost disturb the hydrological cycle.

Building dams, canals, and levees disturb the natural movement of water on, above, and below the earth. When we use this water for households, it gets contaminated by cleaning chemicals, plastic microbeads, and cooking products.

Very often, these impurities remain intact even after the natural filtration process. Also, industrial and agricultural wastewater can contain chemicals used in industries and pesticides and fertilizers.

This contaminated water not only destroys underground sources of water but also spoils the habits of sea life, and changes the temperature and salinity level of water. So we take fresh and pure water from nature but in return, we give it poisonous and contaminated water which is beyond natural treatment.

Way forward

The only solution to overcome the water crisis is to take climate change and global warming into consideration. If we could control our consumption and mindless commodity production, we could surely save some water for the next few generations.

Firstly, we will have to control global warming and its triggers, such as air pollution caused by hazardous gases. Secondly, we have to reduce the massive consumption of water at the industrial level. We also need to use water wisely at the domestic level.