While acting together so the world does not go thirsty, the OECD is addressing growing challenges in water scarcity, floods, pollution and rising demand by helping to ensure that water management is inclusive and effective.
"Water is becoming scarce, and it has impact, real impact, on the livelihood, on the well-being, on the health, on the sustainability of people, and this is our biggest challenge. We should get our act together and get going because the price of inaction is much higher than the price of action."- Peter Glas Chair of the OECD Water Governance Initiative
In the opinion of OECD, water crises are often governance crises, but not everybody knows what water governance is or how important it is to cope with water challenges. Water governance is a means to cope with the challenges of too much, too little and too polluted water, and to ensure that people around the globe have quality access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Water governance is said to be the set of rules, practices, and processes through which decisions for the management of water resources and services are taken and implemented, and decision-makers are held accountable. Beyond defining what should be done, water governance is about who does what, at which level of government, and how.
In 2015, the OECD launched the Water Governance Principles, designed to promote coherent and integrated policy responses to water challenges. To date, over 40 countries and 170 stakeholders from the public, the private and the non-for-profit sectors have endorsed the principles.
The OECD Water Governance Principles help frame the key conditions for effective, efficient and inclusive water policies and provide a tool for countries to understand whether their water governance systems are working or where change, reform or action is needed. The OECD also developed a tool, the Governance Indicator Framework, for concerned parties to understand the performance of water governance systems at city, basin, regional or national scales. The Principles were designed following many years of field experience and a bottom-up process with the international multi-stakeholder network.
The OECD principles on water governance:
Principle 1. Clearly allocate and distinguish roles and responsibilities for water policymaking, policy implementation, operational management and regulation, and foster co-ordination across these responsible authorities.
Principle 2. Manage water at the appropriate scale(s) within integrated basin governance systems to reflect local conditions, and foster co-ordination between the different scales.
Principle 3. Encourage policy coherence through effective cross-sectoral coordination, especially between policies for water and the environment, health, energy, agriculture, industry, spatial planning and land use.
Principle 4. Adapt the level of capacity of responsible authorities to the complexity of water challenges to be met, and to the set of competencies required to carry out their duties.
Principle 5. Produce, update, and share timely, consistent, comparable and policy-relevant water and water-related data and information, and use it to guide, assess and improve water policy.
Principle 6. Ensure that governance arrangements help mobilise water finance and allocate financial resources in an efficient, transparent and timely manner.
Principle 7. Ensure that sound water management regulatory frameworks are effectively implemented and enforced in pursuit of the public interest.
Principle 8. Promote the adoption and implementation of innovative water governance practices across responsible authorities, levels of government and relevant stakeholders.
Principle 9. Mainstream integrity and transparency practices across water policies, water institutions and water governance frameworks for greater accountability and trust in decision-making.
Principle 10. Promote stakeholder engagement for informed and outcome-oriented contributions to water policy design and implementation.
Principle 11. Encourage water governance frameworks that help manage trade-offs across water users, rural and urban areas, and generations.
Principle 12. Promote regular monitoring and evaluation of water policy and governance where appropriate, share the results with the public and make adjustments when needed.
Since 2011, the OECD has also reviewed, at the request of government, the water policies of several countries and proposed recommendations for water reforms.
Pakistan, meanwhile, is feared to be running out of water by 2025, or droughts of unprecedented proportions are going to hit the country within five to seven years.
Therefore, Pakistan would do well to adjust its water management plans and programmes in the light of the above mentioned OECD principles on water governance.
Pakistan has already been advised by experts to shift its focus to managing water demand and producing more from each drop of water. The problems in irrigation are said to be more to do with inefficient and unfair distribution of the water, and low productivity in terms of the yield and value of crops per unit of water used.
According to USAID's Factsheet 2017, Pakistan is now a food-surplus country. But this food surplus annually consumes 104 million acre feet (MAF) of water. Wastage of water in Pakistan's irrigation is said to be one of the highest in the world. Indian Punjab produces 30 per cent more with the same quantity of water while California 50pc more.
Great strides have been made world -wide since the early 1990s and today's water-saving technologies can enable our farmers to produce surplus food using less than 50 MAF of water.
There needs to be, therefore, more focus on better irrigation service delivery and better on-farm water management, coupled with improvements to boost productivity. With a rapidly growing population, Pakistan will inevitably become more water scarce in a relative sense. But Pakistan can become water secure through efficient and sustainable resource management, improved service delivery, and better risk mitigation.
The flows to the sea are commonly seen as wastage. Average flow to the sea has been falling for more than 80 years. Firstly, the eastern rivers were diverted to India and then storages were constructed in Pakistan. Average annual flow to the sea has been reduced by more than 80 percent. Any more reduction in the flows to sea by construction of new dams is likely to cause the sea to invade the delta and destroy its fertility.
According to international standards, 35 gallons per capita per day is enough for a healthy lifestyle. If we want to supply this amount of water to every citizen in the country, all we need is 12 MAF. Including the generally accepted 30pc losses in water supply systems, the domestic requirement for 207 million individuals does not exceed 17 MAF.
Pakistan's industrial consumption is under 10 MAF. So, the actual water requirement to fulfill all domestic, industrial and food security needs is less than 77 MAF including 50 MAF for agriculture, whereas the country's river flows alone contribute an average of 145 MAF of water annually.
The problem, therefore, lies in our consumptive patterns: 104 MAF goes into irrigation, out of which 54 MAF is preventable wastage.
In most cities, domestic and industrial needs can be met by investments in proper aquifer management, prevention of pollution in aquifers and streams, correct handling of storm water run-off, and appropriate disposal of sewerage effluents.
A paradigm-shift from supply management through mega structures to demand management through an integrated suite of water supply and irrigation technologies, policies, legislation, institutions, capacity building, water pricing and business models, etc., could be the game changer in the region.