The disastrous redesign of Pakistan’s rivers

British colonizers created a massive canal system in Pakistan — and helped cause the country’s deadly water crisis.

In late summer of 2022, Pakistan experienced a devastating flooding event. An unusually severe monsoon season induced by climate change resulted in a third of the country being covered with water. Over 1,600 lives were lost, and water took months to drain out of lower-lying regions of the country, causing disease and displacement.

On the flip side, Pakistan is among the most water-scarce countries in the world — expected to reach absolute water scarcity by 2025 if nothing changes. You can’t remove climate change from this equation, but an overlooked factor is the role that British engineering played in building water infrastructure along the Indus River and its tributaries, Pakistan’s sole source of surface water.

A series of perennial canals, dam-like structures called barrages, and embankments were built to extract as much water from the Indus as possible and convert much of Pakistan’s arid landscape into farmland. But this water infrastructure exacerbates the destruction of flooding events and creates a hierarchical system along the canals in terms of water access.

In our video, we explain the design of this water infrastructure and how Pakistan’s colonial past has made the country’s relationship with water even more precarious.

Daanish Mustafa, who we interviewed for this video, co-authored a report on Pakistan’s water crisis:

We recommend The Juggernaut’s reporting on the legacy of dams in Pakistan:

For more context on how Pakistan bears the brunt of the effects of climate change:

We interview David Gilmartin for this story, who authored a book on the history of water engineering in the Indus basin:

[juusan]

As a hydrologist and water resource engineer, this really hits close to me.
Most of the time, we engineers understand the problem/s and can always produce holistic solutions to water resource management.
But unfortunately, we always hit the wall of politics, bureaucracy, corruption, and uninformed decision-makers.
I really wish we experts can really have the final say on matters of water resource management.
I wish everyone especially politicians can understand that water doesn't care about your politics, religion, or affiliation.
We must always remember that "we all live downstream".

[baggern]

but wouldn't rolling back the "modern" irrigation systems mean also going back to subsistence farming + fewer people being able to be sustained by pakistans acres?

[harisasif]

As a Pakistan citizen living in Lahore, this really is very concerning but our army, corrupt govt officers and politicians don't even care a bit about the future generations, they have created a negative economic and political environment on purpose so that there power remains intact, while the major issues like climate change, water scarcity and economic growth and development are getting neglected

[poni]

The first 6 minutes were focussed on colonialists deteriorating the land for money/power and the fact that an independent Pakistan significantly ramped up the canal system over 30-40 years was glossed over in 20 seconds

[ymi_yugy]

The criticism of British colonialism are of course valid, but relying on 150 year old traditional knowledge and trying to turn back to a "natural" state of things is unlikely to yield satisfactory results.
Water-engineering drastically increased the amount of farmable land, that is now needed to feed Pakistan's vastly larger population. The struggle over grain exports from Ukraine and Russia have shown how dangerous an over reliance on food imports can be particularly for poorer countries.
With Pakistan's economy reliant on agriculture, there is also the risk of an economic crisis, that could have similarly severe impacts as some of these natural disasters.
Building a water management system with the modest means of a developing economy that equitably provides enough water to irrigate enough land to feed people in a world that is plagued by ever more extreme weather events, seems like a task with impossible constraints.
With no clear solution in sight, arguments against the proposed solution need to be more substantial than "it's unnatural and the British came up with it".

[moritzl]

If I understand this video correctly, the population explosion of Pakistan is directly related to the engineering of the Indus (makes sense, more agriculture = more food = more people). But that means you can't revert to "indigenous knowledge" as their engineering was designed for a much smaller population. The thing I took away from this video is that just like with the world as a whole, the country over-engineered its way to an unsustainable state, and cannot reverse it now.

[Moosa_Says]

I'm Pakistani and I'm telling you, The canals and Dams aren't the issues, the issue is mismanagement and actually not modernizing this almost century-old irrigation system!!

[szymonpifczyk]

What a strange video! Super interesting on the history and hydrology part but so visibly wrong on the social commentary. From what I gather, the British started to build a canal system in the early 1900s and independent Pakistan continued similar projects to make a desert fertile. Then a hundred years later a number of unfortunate events at the same time culminate in a massive flood with 1, 600 casualties. Tragic indeed. But the proposed alternative, which seems to be "dismantle the colonial canal system and go back to indigenous methods of managing water", basically means to go back to a state in which Pakistan is able to sustain maybe 10 or 20 millions of people tops - not the 230 million it has today. So instead of 1600 casualties over 100 years, you'll have more than 200 million casualties and constant hunger (because an average woman in Pakistan has a few children).

[rikulappi]

The problem seems to be bad engineering rather than over-engineering. Good governance could fix past mistakes if there were the political will to keep selfish interest groups in check.

[dansouthlondon]

Yeah, it's a completely Western idea to artificially redirect water. That's why the first known instances of irrigation took place in Iran, India and Mesopotamia.

[jasonquigley]

The video implies that the solution to Pakistan's water problems is to revert to pre-industrial agricultural and water control methods. This is all well and good if you're willing to accept a pre-industrial standard of living and population (as the video notes, pre-industrial pakistan's population was a 5th what it is today).

Switching to subsistence farming is not the only solution, They could instead invest in better and less corrupt water engineering. Most countries around the world have professional civil and hydro engineers who spend great effort to manage the water systems to prevent flooding and provide further irrigation, and in the vast majority of cases they are successful. The solution for Pakistan is to better manage their water resources and establish an apolitical body to maintain them. This has been the job of governments for millennia. I believe the scale of the damage Pakistan's floods have caused will provide sufficient political will to establish proper, professional, apolitical and holistic management of the country's rivers.

[manoj]

Without talking about Indus water treaty this video is incomplete

[KenMathis]

This videos appears to be conflating two separate issues, inequality of water access and engineering water pathways to capture more water. While the two have been historically linked, they don't have to be. You could still engineer the water pathways, and be more equitable with water distribution and access. The problem is that it appears that the engineering is necessary to support Pakistan's population. They can't just go back letting the rivers flow wherever nature takes them.

Also while damming up the rivers has reduced flow and allowed salt water to destroy previously farmable land, that has to be put into the context of how much more land was created that could support agriculture. My guess is that the latter is a lot more than the former. Again, there is the inequality issue of who gets the new land and who gets their land destroyed, but that's a separate issue that can be remedied while keeping the engineering.

[harisraja]

It's sad to see the once so-called "largest canal irrigation system" go down the drain all due to lack of long term planning by the government.

[williamthebonquerer]

I love how the thesis for this video is Pakistans water policies are a continuation of colonialism and the experts you interview on this reside in the uk

[roland]

In 2012, like many years, there were also massive floods. We were driving through the area. The roads are embankments, they are the high point. So lots of poor people who lost everything were just sitting there on the roads. It was heart-wrenching to see. As far as you could look there was water.

[griffincontracting]

Framing this as a problem of colonialism, that can only be solved with local/indigenous answers is a bit...odd. Engineering and science are absolutely what is needed. Evidence-based solutions.

[aatirehrarsiddiqui]

What does not seem to be clear is that if this "colonial" irrigation system was to be dismantled, would it not have severe repercussions of its own? I think this it is too simplistic to say it's the fault of colonial mindset or colonial practice or over-engineering. The solution probably lies somewhere between sustainable engineering solutions, enforcing flood management related plans and in my humble opinion most importantly arresting the mind-boggling growth of population in Pakistan.

[terramater]

The water crisis is definitely a critical topic. Our crew analysed the current situation at the River Nile. Egyptian farmers along the River Nile banks have long relied on this legendary water source for their way of life. But now the river is drying up, turning the traditional way of life into a struggle. While more efficient irrigation and planting systems might be one solution, wider geopolitical issues are also affecting livelihoods all along the river. We're hoping to see positive solutions to the problematic water conflicts we're seeing nowadays.

[imranhoosenally]

It is important to note that there were no flooding issues during British rule with the fist major floods being in 1950, today's issue comes from Pakistan's mismanagement and poorly thought through expansion of the system.