akistan faces a double water emergency: the drying up of surface storage and the relentless depletion of the groundwater resources. The country is frequently cited as facing severe water stress, with an estimated storage capacity of only about 30 days compared to an international benchmark of 120 days. In March 2025, Tarbela and Mangla reservoirs fell to near dead level, and Sindh faced about 50 percent water shortage at the start of the Kharif season. The IRSA, however, described the depletion to dead levels as a common or usual occurrence.

Geopolitical tussles aside, a major challenge in Pakistan’s water sector is that within its own borders, institutional paralysis, siltation of the dams and huge losses in conveyance are sucking the country’s freshwater into the sea.

NASA GRACE identifies the Indus Basin as one of the world’s most stressed aquifers. The rate of depletion is fast, particularly in central Punjab. This is caused by unchecked extraction, climate stress and failure of regulatory bodies. The impact is overwhelming. Driving aquifer depletion places smallholder farmers in a cycle of debt poverty. Forced dependence on heavily polluted groundwater also leads to chronic illness, child mortality and human capital erosion.

Agriculture, which contributes almost 24 percent to Pakistan’s GDP and employs more than a third of the workforce, is the primary driver of water stress, fuelled by an inefficient canal network and over 1.3 million unregulated tube wells. Pakistan’s agricultural economy is based on suboptimal and unregulated pumping. This is leading to unsustainable aquifer depletion and aggravating the country’s critical storage problem, making them uncompetitive in the international market.

PIDE research shows that the industry’s demand for water rose by 20 percent in the past decade, particularly in the textile, tannery, chemical and cement sectors. Over 90 percent of the industrial plants in the Punjab and Sindh operate without regulation, accelerating the rate of groundwater depletion and saline intrusion into important freshwater aquifers.

Qualitative deterioration of the water supply in the country is extreme. Only a small proportion of wastewater is recycled and industrial hubs such as Karachi, Faisalabad and Lahore dump raw chemicals, dyes and toxic waste into water bodies. These are constantly polluting domestic groundwater. These toxins can percolate down into the underlying aquifer and directly contaminate the drinking water source for millions of people. The domestic sector uses 4-5 percent of the freshwater withdrawn. Some cities face water shortages; however, governance failures and uncontrolled aquifer mining have direct impacts on municipal access. Consequently, women and girls spend countless hours walking long distances in rural and peri-urban areas, in some cases giving up education, health and economic independence.

Lack of trust and water disputes between provinces undermine national cohesion. Trust among the provinces in the Indus Basin has been fractured by disputed formulas for sharing scarce water and unreliable telemetry data. The reduction in freshwater availability due to climate stress is causing ecological collapse downstream of Kotri, with effects on agriculture GDP, industrial development and national cohesion, leading to bitter political conflict with the upstream provinces.

Stronger provincial EPAs, backed by strong political will, with clear timelines and dedicated funding, are also critical components of a stronger national and provincial water framework to address policy gaps related to weak targets, neglected water quality and poor SDGs integration.

Pakistan has a plethora of policy documents, such as the National Water Policy and the provincial water policies (Punjab Water Act 2019 and Balochistan Groundwater Ordinance). These provide guidelines on water storage, groundwater regulation and efficient irrigation. However, performance remains poor.

If a Water Security Task Force is not able to carry out six key imperatives - increasing storage capacity; improving efficiencies; managing groundwater; implementing digital telemetry; strengthening climate resilience; and centralising national funding – it is unlikely to deliver the desired outcomes. Sustained investment and planning have resulted in higher levels of reserves in other countries, like Australia (600 days) and Morocco (700 days); Pakistan remains constrained by decades of under-investment in storage, irrigation modernisation and wastewater treatment infrastructure

There is a need for comprehensive reforms to groundwater recharge, efficiency of water storage systems and strong water management policies.

The solution to Pakistan’s water crisis requires a combination of policy instruments like volumetric pricing of groundwater, non-compliance fines on auditing of water consuming sectors and subsidised adoption of drip irrigation and water infrastructure investments like small delay-action dams and co-financed industrial effluent treatment plants.

Strategic public-private partnerships among the industry, donors and civil society are also critical to rapidly scale up the use of high-efficiency water technologies. Extensive depletion and improper management of groundwater not only lead to depletion of aquifers but also result in loss of flood runoff. It is essential that aquifer recharge is achieved on a large scale. In the short term, farming efficiency has to be improved and surface storage enhanced.

Unchecked abstraction and inadequate storage are a direct threat to Pakistan’s water resource future. With good governance, judicious investment and political will, Pakistan can still ensure its hydrological future. The cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of reform.

Dr Abida Naurin, assistant professor and a member of Macro Policy Lab at Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad, can be reached at @abida_15, [email protected]

Muhammad Mohsin Elahi is an intern at Macro Policy Lab at Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad.