Watershed Governance and Management in Pakistan

Summary of a Watershed Plan

1. Local water governance and management through elected representative of local government system at union council / village level to be established within watershed commands;
2. A political government will be made responsible for appropriate watershed related legislation and regulations;
3. A political government will provide technical assistance, research and training support within selected watershed commands mainly through provincial agriculture and livestock departments;
4. A political government must plan to fence all federal and provincial range lands like paddocks to provide plenty of grazing land in a controlled and responsible way;
5. A political government should propose to let local  (comprising LG- elected members) watershed governance and water management committees  be responsible for the enforcement of related legislation and regulations and surveillances of their part of watershed by inviting government support if and when required;
6. A political government's watershed management plan must include all possible steps that aim to improve well-being and livelihood (like development centers and livelihood support services) of the local inhabitants as a driving mechanism to ensure willing and active cooperation and participation of local users for watershed management.

Terminology / Definitions

According to the concepts related information available on the internet (Section A is mainly reproduced by taking information from different sources on the internet with slight adjustments and sequencing to provide proper perspective of watershed governance and management), we first define watershed and watershed management to present terminology that we will use while discussing the current crisis of water and watershed management in Pakistan.

A watershed is defined as the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place such as a river, stream, pond, lake, wetland, or estuary.

Watershed management, on the other hand, is the study of the relevant characteristics of a watershed aimed at the sustainable distribution of its resources and the process of creating and implementing plans, programs, and projects to sustain and enhance watershed functions that affect the plant, animal, and human communities within a watershed boundary. The following 12 principles of Sally Bunning, an FAO official, summarize the watershed management:

1. Treat underlying causes and not just symptoms;
2. Generate scientific evidence (soil health, water quality, biodiversity effects, climatic effects and resilience);
3. Integrated approach (multi-sector and multi-stakeholders);
4. Holistic planning and implementation (watershed plan);
5. Co-financing and low cost interventions (wider adoption say Bio-gas plants);
6. Institutional arrangements at all levels (local -national);
7. Capacity development at all levels;
8. Bottom up and top down process (local empowerment; policy);
9. Gender balance in decision making;
10. Support and incentive measures (for improvements);
11. Monitoring and evaluation (assessment of benefits);
12. Flexible, adaptive and long-term program / partnerships.

What are those potential watershed functions that are to be sustained and enhanced? Generally, the following five watershed functions are considered important:

1. It collects water from rainfall;
2. It stores water of various amounts and for different times;
3. It releases water as runoff;
4. It provides diverse sites for chemical reactions to take place; and
5. It provides habitat for flora and fauna.

The first three functions are physical in nature and are termed hydrologic functions. The last two are the ecological functions. Human activities affect all the functions of a watershed. For example, when buildings and other impervious areas such as cemented courtyards, streets and other similar structures cover the ground, infiltration decreases and most of the water runs off into collection ditches where stream channel erosion may occur. Furthermore, reduced infiltration may result in less recharge of the groundwater stored in aquifers which supply most of Pakistan’s drinking needs. With both urban and agricultural land uses, chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides can mix with rain entering the soil and may reach groundwater, causing pollution of public and private wells.

 Obviously, for managing such watershed functions on a sustainable basis, we need to have managerial conditions, actions and results. However, to do so, most important is the availability of conducive environment, policies, programs and institutional arrangements in place and functioning to allow and implements decisions for watershed management.

This above stated conditionally points to have a functional watershed governance system to sustain and enhance watershed functions. In other words, if we are facing a crisis in the management of our different river watersheds, it is essentially then the crisis of watershed governance that is the root-cause of this problem. The watershed governance is only the subset of water governance and then everything comes under the overall governance in the country. In the context of watershed governance,  Oliver Brandes (2012)  made a bold prediction"---the future is the shared decision making at the watershed level--- not If but When!" 

 A governance system is a complex package of policies, programs and institutions which, in concert, are intended to provide a specific outcome. The outcomes chosen involve fundamental decisions about how, why and by whom decisions are made, the direction, type and scope of information flows, the responsibilities of economic, community and public sectors, and how activities are encouraged, monitored and enforced.  Addressing the underlying causes of resource competition requires changing the fundamental ground rules that define who is involved in making resource management decisions, what powers these different actors exercise, and how they are held accountable for their decisions. Such innovations in governance are important largely because they are systemic, altering the underlying systems and relationships in which resource management decisions are made.

Moving from the overall concept of governance to more specific like water governance, our brief about groundwater management presents its different definitions as: “Water governance has been defined as the political, social, economic and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water resources and delivery of services at different levels of society (GWP, 2003) or, as described by Moench et al. (2003), water governance is the set of systems that control decision-making with regard to water resource development and management. Hence, water governance is much more about the way in which decisions are made (i.e., how, by whom, and under what conditions decisions are made) than the decisions themselves.”

 Like groundwater governance, watershed governance is also a subset of water governance. It includes the institutional and legal shift toward ecologically-based water allocations, ecosystem-based land and water use decisions, comprehensive demand management and soft path approaches. The overarching goal of watershed governance is to provide alternatives to current systems of water governance and planning that are focused too narrowly on water in isolation from its broader interactions across sectors and within the ecosystem.

  While discussing various governance systems, it is important to note that the watershed governance systems have a number of characteristics that set them apart from the other governance systems. For one, they often seek to give priority to non-human beneficiaries (i.e., plants and animals). In addition, they often seek to bank (save) and redistribute environmental benefits to future generations of people. Further, unlike many policy arenas (include issues such as health care), they typically give science strong voice in agenda setting and evaluation. Finally, they tend to require more comprehensive and integrated responses than other policy issues because watershed health is typically threshold bound and not attainable through incremental steps (e.g. 90 percent of what is necessary to prevent drinking water contamination and fish extinction may still constitute failure).

Background of Watershed Management in Pakistan

 In Pakistan, like many other countries, proper watershed management is essentially portrayed a phenomenon for the downstream benefits only. Generally, watershed management is confined to the following two main reasons: (i) to reduce the sedimentation rates of reservoirs, and (ii) to slow the rate rainwater enters the river thus reducing flood peaks and enhancing the winter flows. Of course, these are crucial factors for the downstream beneficiaries, but how can such statements motivate the inhabitants of a watershed without direct benefits for them? When watershed management is considered to be an integration of human, land and water resources; the dominant objective of any watershed program must be the well-being of local users so that they can play effective role in sustaining and enhancing all potential watershed functions.

We feel that our watershed management is a serious mess at the present time because of lack of serious efforts and if some programs were  designed to improve watershed conditions, they did not have sufficient built-in incentives for the local watershed inhabitants or users. When nothing positive can be expected without the willing and sustained cooperation and participation of the watershed users, it does not make sense not to include all relevant incentives that are essential for creating favorable conditions to ensure the better livelihood of the watershed users through improved land and water resources. Once a watershed governance and management is developed through willing participation and based on the well-being of the local users, crucial factors for the downstream beneficiaries like less reservoirs’ sedimentation and change in flow pattern will automatically happen. This will apply to all other advantages that are associated with improved watershed management. So, we need to change our strategy; avoid putting the cart before the horse; instead, let the horse take its right position to make things work.

Geographically, Pakistan has little control over the catchment areas of three eastern rivers; Sutlej, Ravi, and Chenab. Within the main watershed regions, there are no dams in Pakistan on these rivers and also the flows to Pakistan are controlled by India. Hence, Pakistan does not lose much by not having control in the catchment areas of these rivers. However, the issues regarding two western rivers; Jhelum and Indus are serious. Two major dams, Mangla and Tarbela—the lifeline of Pakistan both for irrigation and power generation are located on these rivers. About 31.2 % of the catchment area of the Jhelum River lies in Pakistan and rest (68.80 %) is located within the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir. And 60% of the catchment areas of the Indus River are located in Pakistan and rest of the watershed lies in Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir (15%), China (10%), India (7%) and Afghanistan (7%). In case of the Chenab River, Pakistan has only 9.1 % catchment area and the rest of the watershed part lies either under the Indian controlled part of Jammu and Kashmir or within Indian own borders. As far as the catchments areas located in other countries or their administered territories, Pakistan may not have enough leverage to get watershed measures implemented there. Luckily, major catchment areas of these two dams are in Pakistan, where there is considerable scope for improvement.

Mangla Dam, commissioned in 1967 has lost 20% of its live storage, which has been compensated by raising of dam completed in 2011. Tarbela Dam was commissioned in 1976 with a gross storage capacity of 11.62 MAF. With an annual silt load of 430 million tons, it has serious sedimentation problems, lost about 47% of its storage capacity by 2005 and is losing about 0.12 MAF of its live storage every year. In order to avoid clogging of power tunnels, the delta formed by depositing sediments in the reservoir is being kept away from raising the dead storage level which has resulted in further reduction of live storage. And, there is no provision in design for raising of Tarbela Dam and the only alternative to compensate for reduced storage would be to construct another multi-billion dollar dam.

And let’s not forget about 68 small and medium dams (the referred figure includes 50 small dams with total capacity of only 0.311 MAF as reported by FAO/ Aqua-stat data of 2009) in Punjab, KPK, and Baluchistan provinces with a total storage capacity of about 5.59 MAF (Roohi, 2006) whose catchment areas are totally in Pakistan and because of their widely spread locations, improved watershed management in catchment areas of these dams will have much wider benefits and environmental impact. In addition, there 1600 mini dams are with total storage capacity of 0.03 MAF (FAO, 2009) with small catchment areas that can easily be identified within the vicinity of these mini dams.

Who should Lead Watershed Management?

Efficient watershed management includes control over tree cutting, grazing, and land clearing; forestation and replanting; erosion and gully control by structural and nonstructural measures; promotion of biodiversity; and strong surveillance. It is obvious that in a free-for-all uncontrolled watershed environment, a strong surveillance is a critical factor. However, based on the well documented rent-seeking practices of the mandated public agencies, who should then be assigned this responsibility? As all these stated negative happenings are local in nature, many people will argue to let there be a local management organization to do the surveillance and enforcement. On the other hand, there is an equally strong argument to avoid such local arrangements as the local influential people grab such entities and then they start misusing the watershed resources for personal benefits. Both are valid view points and we think that by proposing an appropriate watershed governance and management systems, the stated concerns of both sides can be addressed.

 In order to eliminate or minimize all stated negative externalities, watershed management has to have sufficient built-in incentive program for the local population. Most people abuse the watershed out of necessity to make or save money even if we ignore the corrupt greedy.  Therefore, to have a successful watershed management program, it has to be managed by the users who stand to benefit directly and such benefit is critical for their livelihood.  This involves training them on many aspects like: herd/flock sizes and area seasonal stocking rates; basic financial management so they can decide on options; secure, easily accessible and affordable means for saving assets so the need for walking bank accounts is reduced; improved animal genetics – same or more income from reduced animal numbers; optimal plant spacing and plant types mix based on rainfall pattern, soil types and land slopes; and etc.

A watershed management organization was established in 1960’s for Mangla Dam, whose scope was extended to selected small dams as well, and the initial results were encouraging. It implemented innovative incentives by giving kerosene oil to local communities to discourage the use of firewood, in addition to conventional measures like control of logging, replanting, and structural measures. However, the situation deteriorated later when political forces overtook the institutes, leading to massive illegal logging, uncontrolled grazing, and corruption in replanting and civil works for erosion control. This proves a general perception that exclusive monopoly and discretion breed germs of corruption and rent-seeking practices. Therefore, we need to propose watershed governance and management systems where local participation, transparency and accountability are made integral part to minimize monopoly and discretion of one particular arrangement and where checks and balances are carefully worked out. Moreover, success of watershed management is tied to local governance, public, legal and technical support and the pro-user package of incentives for an effective, enhanced and sustainable watershed functions.

A Proposed Watershed Governance and Management Plan

Any government should consider watershed management as a serious issue for the sustainable benefits of irrigation and power generation, environment, biodiversity and to increase the incomes of users of the watersheds like shepherds, livestock and dairy owners, etc. Rangeland management is an important function of watershed governance and management. One proposal could be to fence all federal and provincial rangelands like paddocks to ensure a nutritious and plentiful, but controlled grazing practice / facility for sheep, goats, livestock and dairy animals on the nominal charge basis.  During the first six months, it can be planned to appraise the current situation of institutional arrangements for watershed management, catchment area characteristics, current watershed use practices, and status of siltation of dams. During the next six months, the management entity prepares a plan together with required budgetary outlays for watershed management, including both nonstructural and structural measures covering priority small, medium, and large dams. The plan will also include (i) watershed governance  arrangements at grass-root levels through local government system with formal government support in the form of policy, legislation, regulations, monitoring, technical assistance, research and training facilities along with needed backup support for enforcement and surveillance by the local representative entities, (ii) measures to foster coordination with India to implement similar and confidence building measures in Indian-controlled areas, (iii) instituting/upgrading arrangements for better river and stream gauging particularly including silt load measurements and periodic surveys of reservoirs to monitor siltation, and (iv) establishment of technical centers at suitable and representative locations within selected watershed commands to develop applied extension courses for delivery to watershed users: determining stocking rates, improving animal genetics by selection of breeding stock, forage plant characteristics, low cost terracing, water harvesting for forage plants, etc. In the following four years, the government / governance entity can implement the plan and during the last six months of its period, will evaluate the effectiveness of the plan as implemented and based on the lessons learned, recommended measures for improvement.