Water for Food Security: Challenges for Pakistan

Claudia Ringler · Arif Anwar

Mar 2016 · Routledge

About this ebook

Pakistan’s water management is at a critical watershed. The world’s seventh-most populous country faces serious challenges that will require improvements in both the "hardware" and "software" of agricultural water management. Water shortages are growing rapidly as a result of growing demand across all water-using sectors. Rapid population growth, from 175 million people in 2010 to an estimated 236 million by 2030 and 280 million by 2050, and international food-price spikes create pressure to increase agricultural production of staples; but demand for cash crops is also growing rapidly, including for cotton, fruit trees and tobacco, to raise rural incomes and generate rural employment to absorb the relatively young, rapidly growing rural population. Water management is also increasingly affected by climate change – including an increased number of flood and drought events – and growing energy shortages, which affect how water is being sourced and used. Last but not least, Pakistan’s political situation is fragile, which has reduced incentives to invest in enhanced agricultural water (and other) technologies. How Pakistan addresses these challenges will be decisive for its population’s future water and food security, for economic growth, and for environmental sustainability. It will also affect water and food outcomes globally, due to the interconnectedness of global food trade.

This book was published as a special issue of Water International.

About the author

Claudia Ringler is Deputy Division Director of the Environment and Production Technology Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Her research interests are water resources management--in particular, river basin management--and agricultural and natural resource policies for developing countries. She has more than eighty publications in these areas.

Arif Anwar is Principal Researcher, Irrigation and Head of Office of the International Water Management Institute in Lahore, Pakistan. Arif’s research focuses on irrigation management and his niche is in bringing tools from operations research into the realm of irrigation.