A research conducted by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) states that under the current circumstances Pakistan will touch absolute water scarcity by 2025.
According to Dr Muhammad Ashraf, Chairman PCRWR, Pakistan will only be left with 500 cubic meters per person per day in any such situation.
The root cause of this issue is the inadequate water storage facility. The water received in wet years transforms into floods instead of being saved
Non-conventional water practices result in low water productivity. In the absence of sufficient surface water, reliance increases on groundwater, whose water table is depleting at an alarmingly.
Due to the lack of water regulatory framework, anyone in Pakistan can install tube wells of any size and can pump any amount of water.
In urban areas such as Lahore and Islamabad, water table is reducing at an annual rate of 1 meter per year while in Quetta it is around 6 meters per year. This can be extremely dangerous to an agricultural economy like Pakistan.
