Title: Revitalizing Irrigation in Pakistan
Speaker: Dr Arif Anwar
Date: Friday 28th June 2013 at 16.30
Venue: Lecture Theatre F2/Building 7 Highfield Campus
Pakistan is largely an arid country with average annual rainfall of approximately 350mm yet crop water requirements exceed 1200mm per annum over the two cropping seasons. Hence without irrigation it would be impossible to obtain reasonable productivity. Coupled with this, Pakistan has numerous other challenges including a rapidly growing population, unemployment, weak governance, geopolitical/security issues and low economic growth.
The project Revitalizing Irrigation in Pakistan is funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands, Islamabad with the International Water Management Institute as the principal contractor. The aim of this project is to support the 1997 reforms in the irrigated agriculture sector. These reforms envisaged a private public partnership for the management of irrigation in Pakistan with farmers organized in a hierarchy of institutions; water users associations; farmer organizations and area water boards. The outcome of this reform has been lackluster at best. The reforms have not necessarily led to better water management, more accountability or improved financial sustainability. This has led to some voicing the opinion that these reforms are a failure and a waste of time and money. Unfortunately even these voices don’t offer an alternative vision for the future other than simply reverting.
The reality is that productivity of land and water remain low/stagnant, governance accountability and transparently remains weak, poor service delivery and Pakistan within its irrigation infrastructure is caught in a vicious build-neglect-rebuild cycle. These seemingly intractable problems need innovative solutions appropriate to the context.