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IT’S a misty winter morning in the Indus Delta. Haji Muhammad Moosa Jatt jumps into his boat like a young man.
Moosa, now in his 60s, has been a fisherman for decades, but this year’s fishing season has put a new soul into his aging body.
“The delta has received plenty of freshwater from the mighty Indus River after 12 years. This means there are fishes in plenty,” he told Dawn, happily standing at the deck of his 20-feet-long fishing boat.
And that, he says, has happened after a decades-long wait.
“The fishermen are happy. Their families are happy too,” quickly adds the bulky man. He passes on instructions to his crew before setting out on a voyage from Keti Bunder, one of the oldest jetties in Asia.
Nearby, young fishermen are bringing new nets, carpenters are repairing old boats while mechanics are fixing faulty engines. It’s a sign of busy days ahead this year.
Covering his head with a white Arabic-style scarf indicates that Mr Jatt was once prosperous enough to have performed Haj. This prosperity, however, vanished decades ago.
Moosa Jatt’s village is named after him, attesting to the prestige the veteran fisherman has earned over the decades. His fishing adventures were not limited to the delta and or the Arabian Sea, but went as far as to the Gulf.
Over the past decades, however, his activities have been restricted to the Arabian Sea — that too in salty waters — because the delta has been dying slowly but surely.
Dr Altaf Ali Siyal, the Dean of agricultural engineering faculty at Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam, explains why.
“The condition of the delta is worsening day by day. The main reason is non-availability of freshwater in River Indus,” he says.
“But luckily this year we have got plenty of water due to rains in Balochistan and Sindh. Since July more than 42 million acre feet (MAF) of water has passed through the Kotri barrage and gone into the Indus delta. “Certainly it will boost the environment, ecology, aquatic life and revive the delta.”
According to available data, Dr Siyal added, the Indus delta was spread over 13,000 square kilometres in 1828-29 and had 17 creeks. But now it has only two active creeks — Khobar and Khar. And the active area has fallen to just 1,050 square kilometres — a 90 percent plunge. “This is alarming.”
“Certainly the environment, ecology, and coastal life have been affected due to non-availability of freshwater,” he reasons.
Delta is a place where the Indus falls into the Arabian Sea in Kacho Chhan, near Thatta.
Indus is the fifth largest delta in the world, but it has been drying up due to a lack of adequate inflow of freshwater since the Raj built the first barrage in the 1920s.
Celebration
The International Fisheries Day is celebrated like Eid by the fishing community.
On Nov 21, the community celebrated the day with unusual enthusiasm because the delta had received water for the first time since the 2010 floods.
Wearing new clothes, families thronged a festival organised by the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF).
“It takes nature centuries to develop a delta. But it can take human beings just days to destroy it. This is what happened to Indus delta,” he regrets fisherman-turned-activist Ali Raza Wanjaro.
No water in the delta means no fish and no farming.
According to Wajnaro, thousands of fishermen had given up their forefathers’ calling and opted for other means of livelihood, mostly by working as daily wagers.
Wajnaro bemoans that pollution had brought about a near-extinction of species like Suaa, Ghanghari, Mangra, Heera and Palla. “Where we used to catch these species in tonnes, now we can hardly catch them in maunds.”
Sea intrusion
Muhammad Hashim, 50, is a farmer. On a motorbike, he takes me some 10 kilometres to show what had happened to the once fertile lands of his ancestors.
“During my childhood the sea was far away from agricultural lands,” he recalls, standing on an embankment built to stop the sea’s intrusion.
He waves towards the horizon where the sky and the sea seem to meet.
“Around 400 acres of farmland, handed down from generation to generation, is now submerged,” he says, helplessness writ large on his face.
“Over the last 20 to 25 years, the sea level has reached above our heads,” Hashim says, his face betraying agony.
According to Dr Siyal, the environmentalist, the rising sea levels and its intrusion into the delta is the second major problem threatening agriculture.
“Over the last century, the sea level has risen by one metre (in Pakistan). While Pakistan does not account for even 0.1 percent of industrial pollution, it figures on the list of top 10 countries which suffer from the effects of greenhouse gases and climate change.”
He says 8.6 million acre feet of freshwater must pass through the delta every year —some 5,000 cusecs per day.
Mr Siyal recalls that under the 1991 Indus Water Apportionment Accord, the Indus was supposed to receive 10 million acre feet (MAF) of water annually.
It was further agreed that another 25 MAF would be added to the river, but the agreement was not honoured.
The expert says the country is mainly surviving on two rivers, but since 15 hydraulic structures in the shape of barrages and dams have been built on them, the Indus delta has not got its due share since the 1950s.
“On an average 100MAF should pass through Kotri barrage to enter the Indus delta for its survival.”
Hashim tries to drink a handful of water to check if fresh water has mixed with salty seawater.
But he immediately spits it out. “This is sea water. It’s salty.”
“Once there used to be some 100 human settlements on these lands. The Jatts, Samo and Qaburani communities left for safer areas to save their lives,” he says nostalgically.
World record
We passed through barren lands where the Army had planted over 847,000 mangrove saplings in one day in 2013, making a Guinness World Record. This was an attempt to reforest the delta and provide a natural habitat for fish to replicate.
Hashim, whose forefathers were fishermen, had switched over to farming years ago in an attempt to earn a livelihood.
Riding over dried-up earth, with no signs of the world record mangrove plantation, he expresses an apprehension that the entire area would go under water in five to six years, making it “impossible for us to live here anymore”.
“I’ll be left with nothing and will have to abandon the land of my forefathers.
“I will face a grim choice: either work as a labourer or take to beggary.”
Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2023
