Water Rights and Northern Areas of Pakistan

Residents of water towers having no right on them

Research sponsored by Ecotourism Society Pakistan

Report written by a group of students of University of Punjab headed by Haris Khan BBA Department University of Punjab

 

Abstract

 

Northern areas of Pakistan are home of 5 out of 12 greatest mountains of the world. Mountains intercept air masses, forcing the air to rise and cool, triggering precipitation as rain or snow. The water may be stored as glacier ice, in snow, or in lakes and man-made reservoirs. The summer melting of glaciers and snow is often essential is providing water during the season when precipitation and runoff are often least in the lowlands, and demands are highest. All of the world's major rivers rise in mountain regions. In humid regions, mountains generate 30-60 per cent of the water flowing to the lowlands.

About 90 per cent of the annual flow in the Indus river basin comes from the mountains of the Hindu Kush, Karakorum and western Himalaya: 37 per cent from the Indus river, 15 per cent from the Chenab, 14 per cent from the Jhelum, 13 per cent from the Kabul, 10 per cent from the Sutlej, 7 per cent from the Beas, and 4 per cent from the Ravi. Three-quarters of this water is used in the world's largest irrigation network, on which most of Pakistan's 130 million inhabitants depend. Pakistan offers the biggest canal network in the world however Northern Areas which are providing water to this biggest network has no proper irrigation system and less right on their own water.

Northern areas which are providing 90 percent of total water to Pakistani irrigation system are denied their proper share in the irrigation system as well as in royalty. No big dam has ever constructed in the jurisdiction of Northern Areas therefore these areas have royalty out of electricity and irrigation revenue. Skardu Dam is planned however political issues are stopping this project. Northern Areas due to lack of irrigation system fail to develop proper agriculture system and forest level has also not increased due to same reason. Ecotourism Society Pakistan (ESP) believes that leaving these areas behind the standard level of develop in Pakistan is actually a denial to their human right.  ESP has taken the task to start advocacy of this issue as biggest NGOs working in these areas since 30 years and more are shy to raise this issue at social as well as official level. ESP urges more dams for more water in the country however it demands the mega projects must start from Northern Areas to provide financial share to residents of water towers.  

 

International Position of water and human rights

UN Committee Declares Water a Human Right

“Water is a limited natural resource and a public good fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.”

With these words, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR or the Committee) took the historic step of declaring a human right to water for personal and household use in General Comment No. 15 on the Right to Water, which it adopted in November 2002. A General Comment is a document that provides interpretive guidance to assist States parties in meeting and reporting on their obligations under the Covenant.

One of the premises of human rights is that every human being has a right to those things that are essential to human life. Among those fundamentals are clean air, food, safe water, housing and clothing. However, air and water are not mentioned in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR or the Covenant). At the time the International Covenant was drafted, in the 1950s, clean air and water were so abundant that it may not have occurred to the drafters that they needed to write them explicitly into the Covenant.

Fresh water is no longer abundant, and there is widespread awareness of issues of water quantity, quality and distribution. More than one billion people in the world do not have access to a basic water supply and an estimated 2.4 billion lack access to adequate sanitation. Unless effective action is taken, these trends will continue and further exacerbate a precarious situation. Water was a major theme at the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, and the United Nations has declared 2003 the International Year of Freshwater. In March 2003, a major international conference—the Third World Water Forum—will take place in Kyoto, Japan.

Because the right to water does not appear in the Covenant per se, the Committee derived the right from its interpretation of other provisions, locating it in Articles 11 (the right to an adequate standard of living) and 12 (the right to health). The General Comment deals with adequate water for personal and domestic purposes, defining adequacy in terms of factors such as availability, accessibility, quality and quantity.
In simplified terms, a human right imposes legal obligations on states to respect, protect, and fulfill the normative content of the right, and to do so in a way that reflects the fundamental human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination. States must give special attention to the needs of marginalized and vulnerable people. In economic, social and cultural rights, every human being has a claim on the state to meet it’s minimum core obligation with respect to that right, through direct provision if other means are not available. Human rights also provide forms of recourse and redress if a state violates its obligations.

The international human rights system has weaknesses, notably in its lack of effective enforcement mechanisms. Still, the existence of human rights gives people legal claims, and as they press their claims and come to believe in their rights, they begin to make the rights real.

Water is essential to all life. Yet, one in three Asians lacks access to safe drinking water, and half the people living in Asia and the Pacific do not have access to adequate sanitation.

Today, over 1.1 billion people of the world's population lack access to improved water supply and 2.4 billion people lack access to improved sanitation. Recent studies predict that by 2025, 2 out of 3 people in the world will be facing a water shortage.

The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities recognizes that countries have different responsibilities for solving common problems. The continuing contamination, depletion and unequal distribution of water resources is exacerbating existing poverty. State parties have the duty to progressively realize, without discrimination, the right to water. "The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, affordable, physically accessible, safe and acceptable water for personal and domestic uses. While those uses vary between cultures, an adequate amount of safe water is necessary to prevent death from dehydration, to reduce the risk of water-related disease and to provide for consumption, cooking, personal and domestic hygienic requirements," the text says.

Water is a basic element of all life. Over 70 percent of the human body is made up of water. While a human being may survive without food for several days, water deprivation can kill a person within a matter of hours. Water is also a requirement for the most basic activities vital to sustaining human life, including agriculture, cooking, and sanitation. Yet while water sustains life, it can also bring death if contaminated. Some of the deadliest diseases, which kill millions around the world each year, are carried in unclean water. Access to adequate amounts of clean water, for both consumption and sanitation, is a prerequisite for a healthy life. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, “all human beings have the right to life”; this includes the right to water.

Although the international community recognized the right to water, as a component of the right to life, over fifty years ago, millions around the world are still denied access to adequate amounts of clean water.

Violations of the right to water come in many forms: industrial pollution of water sources, failure to provide purification and sanitation for the urban poor, pricing of water delivery beyond the reach of the rural poor. In arid regions, states have regulated access to water as a way of controlling marginalized groups. Reclaiming water as a human right reframes the terms of debate around water scarcity. While human actions or neglect cause most water shortages and contamination of water resources, the problems of water supply and sanitation are often portrayed as stemming only from natural phenomena such as drought, climate change, or seasonal weather patterns. Recognizing a human right to water is an important step toward holding decision-makers accountable and recognizing the social and political dimensions of water use and management.

Potential violations of the right to water are:

 

Lacking access to municipal sources, many of the poor must rely on other means to purify their water. These methods, including boiling water, place a heavy burden on poor households. In Bangladesh, according to the World Commission on Water, the cost of boiling water consumes over a tenth of poor families’ incomes. In Peru, among informal settlements, this figure can reach 29% of their income. By comparison, residents of New York City spend xx% of their income on water. The price of securing water is not only paid in money, however. Obtaining water from distant water sources consumes up to 15% or rural women’s time, according to Dr. John Briscoe, advisor to the Commission. This amounts to over ten million person-years annually of the labor and time of women and female children spent on carry water from distant, and often polluted, water sources.



The Right to Water is a life and death issue
A child dies of a water-related disease every eight seconds.
Each year, more than seven million human beings die from illnesses related to water.

Water is essential for healthy individuals and communities
The World Health Organization notes, “At any given time, perhaps one half of all peoples in the developing world are suffering from one or more of the six main diseases associate with water supply and sanitation (diarrhoea, ascaris, dracunuliasis, hookworm, schistosomiasis and trachoma)


Pakistan Position

Irrigated agricultural is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy. At the same time with word’s fastest growing population estimated to touch 150 million marks by the turn of the century, there is a dire need to increase agricultural production. If nothing is done, there would e approximately 25% shortfall in food grain requirements by the year 2000, Judging from current (1997) two million tones import of wheat, by that time, Pakistan could be one of the major food deficit countries in the world.

Due to complete stoppage of any sizeable surface water resources development after full commissioning of Tarbala Dam during, 1976, even sustainability of existing irrigated agriculture is in serious jeopardy.

With a large arable land, Pakistan still has the potential of bringing several million acres of virgin land under irrigation. An important impediment in the way of this development is insufficient control over flood water of the rivers. With virtually no limit on availability of land, it is unfortunate to willingly let large quantities of water into the sea. In post-Tarbala 20 years, an annual average of over 38 million acres feet (MAF) escaped below Kotri; after adjustment of future abstraction out-side Indus Basin, this could still be around 32 MAF. Out of this, an average of over 26 MAF per year could be effectively controlled and efficiently utilized to bring about prosperity to millions, particularly, in backward areas of Pakistan through national water resources development approach.

Besides recurring irrigation water shortage, the country passes through periodic calamity caused by the phenomenon of floods (1992 followed by 1994 very large floods should act as eye-openers) Monsoon rains result in swollen rivers which spill over their banks, bringing in the wake loss on a colossal scale. Floods are detrimental, not only in financial terms, but also in the form of sever undermining of productive system, which should logically be free from uncertainties and frequent dislocations. In the context of Peshawar alley above Nowshera, frequent flooding takes place due to entrance of Kabul river into confined channel below this point.

If the present inaction towards development of national surface water resources continues, Pakistan would be faced with innumerable socio-economic problems at the dawn of 21st Century. It is, therefore, imperative to launch urgently a national water resources development programme including major multi-purposes storage,  remodeling of some existing projects and construction of new irrigation schemes, particularly in backward areas of all provinces.

River Indus and its tributaries, un-questionably, are the larges national resources. Besides sizeable surplus water still going out to sea, Indus System has over 30,000 MW of economically developers hydropower potential. For effective harnessing of this renewable resources, most of which is run-of-river type, it would be necessary to build multi-purpose storage. These would generate sizeable blocks of cheap electricity and thus check the excessive tariff increases due to anticipated large scale induction of costly thermal power. In particular, these would provide means for; substituting the continuous capacity loss of on line storages to sustain the existing irrigation; development of new irrigation projects, and effective flood control.

God has gifted Pakistan a Three Gorger Dam at Katzarah on the Indus with the largest storage reservoir in the World. The dam site is located on the down stream of the confluence of Shiok River, Shigar River and Indus River to store 35 maf of water. It has seven times the storage capacity of Basha dam. It will generate up to 15000 MV of hydropower. Katzarah reservoir will  have a lifespan of about 1000 years due to excellent capacity-inflow ratio and normal silt flow. Katzarah will completely control floods, regulate Indus River flow essentially required for optimum generation of power by Ghazi Barotha power channel specially during the minimum flow season in winter months when the Indus discharge is as low as 10,000 cusecs against the required discharge of 60000 cusecs for GBPC. It will regulate flow for the Indus Basin irrigation system to supply water as and when needed. Katzarah will serve as development dam to alleviate poverty and bring under irrigation about 10 million acres of barren lands in the four provinces. This will provide jobs, boost economy and help develop agriculture and industries. Katzarah will serve as carry over dam to safeguard against drought and famine. It will serve as inter-seasonal dam to remove shortage of water in winter. Katzarah will serve as replacement storage for the silting of Tarbela and Mangla. Katzarah will help channelise the 14 miles wide Indus River bed and reclaim about 6 million acres of riverbed for cultivation besides saving a major portion of 14 maf of water losses in the Indus River bed. In short, storage dam is directly linked to poverty alleviation.

Rights of poor people of mountains areas----water towers have been denied long and this is high time that Pakistan must realize their right and start any big dam in Northern Areas.