Every monsoon season, floods return to Pakistan. And with them comes a familiar chorus. Pundits and politicians call for more dams. Critics push back, warning of ecological, financial and social costs.
Year after year, the arguments repeat, but the water still rises, crops are destroyed and lives are lost while the underlying problem remains unresolved.
So what does Pakistan really need? The answer is not either-or. Pakistan does need dams. Hydropower is one of the cheapest and cleanest sources of energy available to us and expanding it is essential if we are serious about reducing dependence on imported fuels. Reservoirs also provide crucial storage for agriculture, especially during dry months, and they can help regulate moderate flows in the Indus system. To reject dams altogether would ignore these benefits.
But dams are not, and cannot be, the primary solution to catastrophic flooding. The Indus in full flood carries volumes no storage structure in Punjab or Sindh could ever absorb. Once reservoirs fill, their operators must release water downstream, which means the same floodwaters spread across villages and farmland anyway. To believe that dams alone can shield Pakistan from climate-driven disasters is to misread both science and geography.
Global experience reinforces this reality. Around the world, countries that once pinned their hopes on mega-dams are reassessing their costs. Reservoirs silt up, fisheries collapse, river ecosystems are disrupted and communities are displaced. Some dams are even being dismantled because the long-term damage outweighed the gains. In the US, more than 1,200 dams have been removed in recent decades to restore river systems. In Europe, the trend is similar as governments recognise that rigid control of rivers creates new risks instead of eliminating old ones. Pakistan cannot afford to repeat mistakes others are already undoing.
If dams are not enough, what else must be done? The answer is a layered approach to resilience. Flood management begins far upstream, with watershed practices that reduce the force of water before it ever reaches the plains. Wetlands must be restored so they can absorb excess flows. Riverine forests need protection as natural buffers. Aquifers should be recharged rather than drained. These ecological systems are frontline defences, not to be treated as expendable.
In cities, the challenge is different but no less urgent. Urban centres are overwhelmed each monsoon not just by rivers but by their own drainage failures. Streets turn into canals because stormwater systems are outdated or clogged. Our cities all saw their infrastructure buckle under relatively routine downpours in recent years. Urban redesign, investment in drainage and better zoning are as critical to flood protection as any new reservoir. Without them, no city will be safe.
Rural areas face another challenge: encroachment on floodplains. For decades, unregulated development has encroached on natural floodplains, ensuring that ordinary floods become human disasters. Protecting these zones, regulating construction and modernising irrigation systems deliver results that save lives and livelihoods. Bangladesh has reduced disaster deaths by investing in cyclone and flood shelters, improving early warnings and protecting flood-prone zones.
Forecasting and early warning systems must be strengthened so alerts reach vulnerable communities with enough time to evacuate. Embankments protecting population centres must be reinforced and properly maintained. Provincial governments must coordinate more effectively, because rivers do not recognise political boundaries and fragmented responses worsen the damage. The Netherlands’ ‘Room for the River’ programme shows one model of how countries can rethink flood control: by giving rivers space to spread safely rather than trying to confine them at all costs.
Finally, we must abandon the flawed notion that water flowing into the sea is ‘waste’. This belief has driven calls to trap every drop upstream. In reality, freshwater flows sustain mangroves, protect coasts from cyclones and storm surges, and keep fisheries alive. Interrupting those flows creates vulnerabilities that cost far more than the imagined benefit of holding back the water. Treating the sea as a drain, rather than a living system that needs replenishment, is a strategic error.
So, after every monsoon, when the television panels light up with the familiar argument, ‘build dams, don’t build dams’, the country should resist the temptation to reduce a complex challenge to a simple choice. Pakistan needs both: strategically built dams for energy and water management, and a broader, climate-smart strategy that makes rivers safer rather than attempting to fight them.
Dams can support us, but they will never save us on their own. Real safety comes from foresight, discipline and respect for the natural systems that have always sustained life here. That is the debate we should be having – before the next flood arrives.
The writer is a non-resident fellow at the CISS. He posts/tweets
@umarwrites
