Abstract
Water security imposes serious challenges for the social and economic development of Pakistan, which is the eight-most climate-vulnerable country in the world. This extreme climatic variability (drought/floods) has highlighted the need to manage Pakistan’s water resources more sustainably. In 2018, the Government of Pakistan developed a National Water Policy (NWP) to provide an overall policy framework and guidelines for a comprehensive plan of action leading to the development of sustainable water management solutions. This chapter will briefly review past water policies and take stock of available water resources and their sectoral uses, water use options under climate change, and water governance. It will also include data on available water (surface and groundwater) and sectoral uses by basin. In addition, it will comprehensively review Pakistan’s current water resources, the challenges faced by irrigated agriculture, and possible future strategies to overcome these problems and ensure the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in the Indus Basin. It will introduce topics that will be discussed in succeeding chapters in more detail.
This work was carried out under the CGIAR Initiative on NEXUS Gains, which is grateful for the support of CGIAR Trust Fund contributors: www.cgiar.org/funders
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Hafeez, M., Awan, U.K. (2023). Water Resource Potential: Status and Overview. In: Ahmad, M. (eds) Water Policy in Pakistan. Global Issues in Water Policy, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36131-9_3
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