HYDERABAD: Ahmed Khan Jatt had no other option but to relocate his home in Kharochhan in the then Thatta district in 1985 to deh Chore Gujjo after sea swallowed up his entire village. Since then, sea intrusion has grown into a monster which continues to feed on rich deltaic farmland and coastal settlements.

“Of around 32 Dehs in our union council, farmers are able to cultivate crops in hardly four to five dehs. The rest of the area is surrounded by sea. This area (Indus delta) used to have quality agriculture resources which we have lost to sea over the years,” explains 62-year-old Jatt.

He and his fellow villagers complain they are dependent on canal system of Kotri barrage and being at the tail-end of the system, they often receive little to no flows at all.

“Only rain comes to our rescue but that too has been seriously impacted by climate change. It has affected normal pattern of rainfall,” he says.

He is perhaps not aware of World Water Day observed every year on March 22 whose theme this year is “water and climate change”. The theme relates certainly to people of Indus delta, said to be the world’s seventh largest.

Fed by Indus freshwater, more than a dozen creeks formed part of the delta — home to agriculture, fishing, livestock, forests, pastures and orchards that produced rice, millet, gram, oilseed, honey etc – but it is no longer the case.

Climate change has changed it all. It is one of leading causes behind inadequate water flows in Indus that used to irrigate the entire delta but now it is referred to as a dying delta because of insufficient freshwater flows.

Sea intrusion is a threat to deltaic population. Rising sea level is another cause of concern for them and missing sustainable flows in the river have, indeed, made matters worse. From experts’ point of view, the Indus used to bring huge silt deposits with it that served as a barrier to sea intrusion.

Water flows downstream Kotri are highly unreliable and the fact also leads to acrimony between provinces – mainly Punjab and Sindh – in view of interprovincial water distribution that is done on the basis of Water Apportionment Accord 1991.

According to Prof Dr Altaf Ali Siyal of Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, who prepared a report on “Climate change: assessing impact of seawater intrusion on soil, water and environment on indus delta” in 2018, less than 8.6MAF water passed Kotri barrage downstream during 2000-2019.

He refers to a study carried out by an international panel of experts who called for releasing 5,000 cusecs post Kotri daily and 25,000 cusecs once in five years.

He says that soil erosion has affected Sujawal which has lost its mangroves cover and waves’ speed is too high. “Shoreline is shrinking and sea is intruding fast. We found traces of sea intrusion in sub-surface water in Sujawal,” he says.

He recommends that “there is need to expand already constructed 38km long coastal highway up to 200km on left bank of Indus by building a bridge over the river at Kharochhan as this will serve as a levee against sea”.

Pakistan’s average water availability is said to be 145MAF with challenges of low water use efficiency, water conservation, low productivity and water management. As principal water user, Pakistan’s agriculture sector gets around 93pc of total resource with 18pc contribution to GDP.

With inefficient water distribution practices the losses of freshwater were estimated at around 31pc at watercourse level but to their detriment Pakistani farmers are obsessed with cultivation of high delta crops like sugar cane and rice.

Pakistan’s per capita water availability has dropped (800-1000 cubic meter per capita) considerably to place it on the list of water stressed countries. Increasing population, industrialisation and urbanisation have compromised flows’ availability for Indus delta even further.

Sindh Abadgar Board representative Mehmood Nawaz Shah agrees that farm sector gets major share of water and there is great need for rationalising its usage. He is, however, dissatisfied with water accounting system and regrets that water distribution does not have any allocation for delta.

“We have raised it before the prime minister that we don’t have figures on exact water losses which vary from one canal to another or one barrage to another. We feel the losses hover around 20pc-40pc but we need to have a benchmark for losses to set our direction,” he says and adds Pakistan is unable to get desired productivity from existing water flows that is otherwise a normal phenomenon – higher productivity with less water – in developed world.

The mass migration of population caused by sea intrusion in coastal strip has led Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum leader Mohammad Ali Shah to call for ‘personhood right for river Indus’ as is done in New Zealand.

“We are faced with a disaster situation. Actually, we need to “free” Indus that has been chained in dams. Indus used to bring 400m tonnes of silt historically which is lost due to barrages. We will be doomed if the river flows are diverted and sea intrusion is not checked,” he says.

According to country director of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Mehmood Cheema, the sea intrusion adversely impacts lives of coastal communities and IUCN is not unmindful of it. “We have taken nature-based initiatives,” he says.

He advocates mangroves plantation and argues that a hectare of mangroves is equal to economic value of $1,300 per annum as it serves a large population of fish seedlings.

“We need to work on restoration of vegetation cover like India which has increased vegetation from 15pc in 1947 to 23pc now while we have around 5pc left and that is a dismal figure,” he says. “We have assisted Pakistan navy technically to grow two million mangroves each in 2018 and 2019 along Sindh and Balochistan coasts,” he claims.

Sindh framed agriculture policy in 2018 but it has not been put into effect with a clear roadmap as to how to ensure maximum productivity with unreliable water flows and how to improve water use efficiently. It has become all the more important now to achieve sustainable economic growth as envisioned in the policy that aims to achieve 4-5pc growth.

Ironically, Planning Commission (PC) has not yet approved an important project of the ministry of science and technology titled ‘monitoring of sea level, sea intrusion, land subsidence (movement of land in delta) and coastal erosion along Sindh and Balochistan’.

The PC had excluded important component of land subsidence which was to be dealt by Suparco to reduce the cost from Rs650m to Rs411m. “The ministry has now revised the project’s cost to Rs730m with re-inclusion of the said component. The project will help determine rate of sea intrusion in coastal area,” says an official. Its approval is still awaited.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020