Is solar power pushing Pakistan's water crisis to the brink?

Balochistan is Pakistan’s fruit basket, producing 90 per cent of fresh fruits for the rest of the country. Farming has not been easy in the province, however, as frequent power cuts, voltage fluctuations, and unpredictable rainfalls worsened by human-caused climate change have made watering their produce increasingly tricky. 

Agriculture accounts for 93 per cent of total water use in the province. It mainly comes from rivers, flood runoffs, and ‘karez’—an Indigenous method in which a series of well-like vertical shafts are built, connected by sloping tunnels tapping into groundwater and delivering it to the surface without pumping. According to officials, much of the water has been lost due to poor maintenance of irrigation systems and conventional farming methods.

Currently, the southwestern province relies on over 40,000 tube wells that extract groundwater, but unstable grid power exposes the weakness of water scarcity. Authorities planned to convert about 30,000 tube wells to low-cost solar power in August.

However, this seeming solution threatens to exacerbate Balochistan’s burgeoning groundwater depletion, as tube wells have over-extracted groundwater, with the level in some basins declining by more than 5 metres each year, according to a World Bank report. 

Balochistan has been facing groundwater stress for the last two decades as the groundwater level continues to decline rapidly. Limited rainfall, increasing temperature, prolonged droughts and a rapidly increasing number of tube wells are the contributing factors behind the water crisis in the province.

Rural women are also the worst affected by water scarcity. In a tribal and patriarchal society, women are often responsible for fetching water for their households. As groundwater levels decline, they must fetch water from far-off areas to meet their needs.

Amina, a 23-year old mother-of-five, is a housewife from northern Balochistan. She lives in a mountainous region and has to fetch the river’s brackish water for drinking and cooking as there is no alternative water source in her village.

She and her two daughters walk to the river bank each morning in yellow buckets and jerry cans on their heads to bring water. Although the water is salty and not drinkable, the villagers have no other option.

"The deep wells in my village dried up during the drought and have been left abandoned," she told FairPlanet.

A solar controversy

The Zamindar (farmers) Action Committee Balochistan terms the newly launched project a historic move and says its year-long efforts finally bore fruit. Due to power outages and voltage fluctuations, the standing crops and fruit-bearing orchards have dried up, resulting in huge losses to the farmers.

However, Dr Muhibullah Kakar, assistant professor in the Geology Department at the University of Balochistan, believes that a water crisis might be in the making in the long run.

He told FairPlanet that while switching tube wells to solar energy instead of fossil fuel-generated electricity is a positive move by the government, the increasing number of tube wells may lead to severe environmental implications and water crises in the future. The imbalance between groundwater recharge and discharge may lead to extreme water scarcity.

"The extreme discharge can lead to water table depletion at alarming levels and may lead to a point of ‘no return’ as in the case of Cape Town in South Africa."

In their reports, the World Bank and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) also expressed concerns that the transition of tube wells to solar power could have devastating environmental impacts due to its use for groundwater levels from dawn to dusk.

Nasrullah Barech, Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for Peace and Development (CPD), echoed Kakar’s comment. He told FairPlanet that excessive groundwater use in the absence of effective regulatory systems and recharge mechanisms, coupled with prolonged drought, has adversely affected the social and economic well-being of the people of Balochistan.

"The decision to convert thousands of tube wells from electricity to solar energy will have catastrophic consequences if the project is implemented. The rest of the world has regulatory authority and policy in this regard, but we are deprived of them," he said.

Alternatives to solar tube wells

Abdul Jabbar Kakar, a founding member of the Balochistan Ziminadar Action Committee, said that if tube wells can’t be reduced and their utilisation could increase due to solar power, education for farmers can be a solution.

"Through awareness campaigns, the farmers can be convinced to depend less on water-intensive crops and more on drought-tolerant and short-duration or quick-maturing crops," he said. 

Experts suggest creating artificial recharge systems to replenish groundwater aquifers, raising water rights awareness among rural communities, using precision agriculture to minimise agricultural water usage and encouraging farming practices that use water-efficient crops. Moreover, groundwater can also be recharged by digging deep water wells (injection wells) inside the dams.

"Instead of investing in extra tube wells for water extraction, the government should invest in drip irrigation to minimise the use of water and save water," geologist Dr Muhibullah suggested. "Farmers should also adopt water-efficient irrigation practices," 

Image by Rafiullah Mandokhel.