Category: Blog

The water crisis in Pakistan is both a supply and a demand side issue with various contributing factors at play. On achieving statehood in 1947, the country held 5,300 cubic meters of water per capita, which has now been reduced to 1000 cubic meters. Pakistan faces continued clashes with upper riparian India over rights to water from the Indus river. Moreover, a historic lack of political will to consider the repercussions of water scarcity has led to underinvestment in water infrastructure and sub-optimal pricing of water across all sectors. Underpricing and inadequate regulation has created a pervasive culture of irresponsible water consumption and lack of conservation. However, since the reasons for mismanagement stem from several quarters, the solution for optimal utilization of water is not straightforward.

Pakistan’s water scarcity is the result of a combination of factors, including the mismanagement of water resources and burgeoning population growth.  Currently Pakistan’s economy is one of the world’s most water-intensive economies in terms of cubic meters consumed per unit of GDP. Further, its water productivity is among the lowest, producing 0.13kg of agricultural output per cubic meter, while that of the US’s stands at 1.3kg. Low productivity compounded by spiraling population growth has meant dwindling water quantities available per person. For these reasons, the country was declared as water scarce in 2005.

To discuss this further, the Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR) organized a policy talk around issues of water mismanagement in Pakistan. The panel hosted the Minister for Irrigation, Punjab, Mr. Mohsin Leghari, Dr. Erum Sattar, Visiting Fellow, Harvard Law School, and Mr. Arif Nadeem, CEO, Pakistan Agriculture Coalition (PAC). The session was moderated by Mr. Ali Habib, Managing Director of an environmental consulting firm, HimaVerte.

Dams may not effectively address water scarcity

Constructing dams at upper riparian locations of the Indus river basin can be considered as a means to evenly control year round water flows going all the way down to Sindh. Mr. Leghari emphasized on the need to develop a consensus on the Kalabagh Dam. He further explained that in addition to good returns on investment, the project promises, contrary to popular belief, 88% share in the additional water storage for all provinces other than Punjab, with Sindh being the major beneficiary. Yet, despite this knowledge, politicians are unable to find a way forward.

Construction of dams, however, will not address the emergency of dwindling water resources and availability of clean drinking water unless agriculture methods are modernized. More than 90 percent of fresh water is diverted towards agriculture. Agriculture in Pakistan relies on inefficient methods that over-extract and waste water. Lack of technological advancement in agriculture is perpetuated by misaligned state incentives for uptake of technology and use of more productive seeds. Farmers find it economically viable to grow water-intensive crops such as sugar cane and rice and waste water, even though these crops do not contribute significantly to the economy.

Mr. Arif Nadeem discussed it would be more financially and environmentally sustainable to import (instead of over produce) sugar, and shift to value-added crops like sesame seeds with high economic value and comparative advantage. Such crops not only utilize less water but also generate foreign exchange.

The government should thus redirect farmers towards sustainable agricultural choices through imposition of state regulation for water conservation and correcting its pricing. Currently the water price does not reflect its scarcity. It is instead valued at the cost incurred for maintaining water infrastructure and extraction borne by the farmer in the form of electricity bills. This comes down to a paltry PKR 135 canal water charges per year and PKR 3000 to 5000 per acre watering charges for electricity.

Construction of dams may not ensure an adequate water supply unless they also address the issue of water losses incurred due to faulty construction of both reservoirs and distribution infrastructure. Distribution network losses amount to 50 to 55 million acre feet (MAF) of water every year.

Policymakers must bear these points in mind before the construction of proposed Bhasha Dam, that can potentially store up to 8.5 MAF of water begins. Mr. Leghari added that Pakistan currently stores less than 10% of the water that flows compared to a global average of 40%.

Water management as a solution to water scarcity – Lessons from the Colorado river basin

Pakistan can learn from the significantly successful water management strategies deployed in the Colorado river basin. Dr. Sattar presented the findings of her extensive research on the basin highlighting lessons for Pakistan. The Colorado basin in America is currently undergoing a two-decade drought. Despite this, the US government has managed to increase both its agriculture productivity by 25 percent and its power generation by 30 percent. The US was able to do this by building consensus amongst all relevant stakeholders for implementing effective reforms, which is something that the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) in Pakistan has not succeeded in doing thus far. Dr. Sattar further shared that Indus river basin has 10 times more water in the system than the Colorado water system and yet Pakistan’s GDP is lagging massively behind.

The broad contours of the solution comprise rationalization of water use, especially for agricultural purposes, which can happen through adequate costing of water and will prompt higher productivity per each drop of water. Crop zoning has proven crucial for conservation of water. Demand management, through mobilizing extra cubic meters of water –  and not dams – remains the cheapest per liter source of water.

Latest policy response on water mismanagement in Pakistan

A National Water Policy 2018 has been formed, which has determined the key priorities on which the newly formed water commission, run by Federal Ministers, will urgently work towards.  To this end, a coordination body has been assembled for tackling the multifarious issues pertaining to water mismanagement by bringing all stakeholders on board for political ownership. This is a similar model which was followed by the US government for the efficient utilization of water from the Colorado river basin despite the seemingly unsurmountable challenges they faced. Their institutional coordination included all political and private sector influencers in the matter from the highest to the lowest echelons relevant for contributing to the solution. That level of transparency and fervent intention is what needs to be replicated in Pakistan for sound implementation of the identified priorities.

Sharmin Arif is the Communications Associate at the Consortium for Development Policy Research.

More than one in every three children born in Pakistan today is stunted. Child stunting, measured as low height for age, is associated with numerous health, cognition and productivity risks with potential intergenerational impacts. With a stunting rate of 38 percent (Demographic & Health Survey 2018), Pakistan is still among the group of countries with the highest rates of stunting globally and the pace of decline remains slow and uneven. In Sindh, for example, things have worsened over time, with one in two children now stunted!

The policy response to this enormous health crisis has been almost entirely centered on interventions at the household level—reducing open defecation (OD), improving household behaviors like child feeding and care practices and food intake.

A recent World Bank report, which I co-authored, suggests that a major shift is this policy focus is required for significant progress on child stunting. The report begins by showing that over the past 15 years Pakistan has made enormous progress in reducing extreme poverty, with the poverty rate falling from 64 percent to just under 25 percent in 2016. This has improved dietary diversity, even among the poorest, and increased household investment in a range of assets, including toilets within the home. This has, in turn, led to a major drop in OD, from 29 percent to just 13 percent. Curative care has also expanded, with the mainstreaming of basic health units and the lady health worker program.

Why has progress on all these fronts made virtually no dent in rates of diarrhea and stunting?

In the report we argue that to reconcile these apparently anomalous facts, we need to refocus attention on why arguments for ending OD were made in the first place. The intended benefit of ending OD was to ensure the safe removal of fecal waste away from human settlements and waterways, in order to contain the bacterial contamination of water, soil and food. The role of E. coli bacteria in diarrhea prevalence has been known for a long time. Now research has also shown the far more damaging impact of environmental enteropathy (EE), a process by which fecal pathogens like E. coli can permanently damage the intestinal villi of young children making it difficult for them to absorb nutrients even during periods when there are no signs of diarrhea. EE leads to both stunting and a compromised immune system, with lifelong health challenges.

So, what does the available evidence on E. coli contamination in Pakistan tell us? While there is no systematic testing of water or soil, the Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) has been conducting water quality tests in some locations. These tests almost invariably reveal high levels of E. coli. contamination.

Water tests done as part of a long-term study in rural Punjab and Sindh that is being conducted by me and my co-authors at the World Bank, show that more than one-third of the water samples drawn directly from hand and motorized pumps, as well as from piped water supply systems, in rural Punjab were contaminated with E. coli bacteria. This numbers are consistent with PCRWR (2011) for Punjab. What is more alarming is that the rate of bacterial contamination rises to 50 percent, when water storage devices within the home are tested. In Sindh, things were much worse. Close to 60 percent of ground water was contaminated at source, with contamination rates rising to 75 percent when water storage devices were tested.

Why is ground water in the most densely populated areas of rural Pakistan so contaminated? The answer lies in the way expansion in access to “improved” toilets and water supply has been achieved. There has been almost no public investment in water or sanitation systems in rural Pakistan. Instead, households have largely self-provided for both, and have done so in the absence of even a basic set of regulatory guidelines. The result has been devastating, especially in the poorest districts. In rural Sindh, for example, most toilets are of the leaching pit or open drain variety and are built in close proximity to water pumps. This sets the stage for the substrate contamination of ground water, especially where the aquifer is shallow. Open drain toilets further concentrate untreated fecal waste around human settlements and much of the waste flowing in open drains eventually enters surface water systems spreading the contamination. Fecal waste is also dumped in open trash heaps around villages, spreading more contamination to surface soil. It doesn’t end here. Untreated waste water is routinely mixed with ground and surface water for crop irrigation. This creates further downstream effects, contaminating the food grown and distributed for consumption in the major urban centers of the country, where it is consumed by the rich and the poor alike. Together this chain of contamination multiplies the channels through which the oral transmission of fecal bacteria can occur—food, flies, fingers, fields, and fluids.

The incidence of diarrhea in Sindh’s largest cities provides clear evidence of this. Even the richest households in cities like Karachi and Hyderabad report diarrhea rates among young children of close to 30 percent. In fact, as we show in the report, living in proximity to an area with poor quality sanitation provides roughly the same exposure to fecal pathogens as being poor.  Interestingly, the evidence also shows that areas with the highest levels of diarrhea and stunting engage in roughly similar or better health behaviors than areas with lower levels.

If anything, stunting, diarrhea and other types of morbidity could well have increased in Pakistan, were it not for the decline in poverty and improvements in diet and primary health care.  This is not to suggest that these factors do not need attention. They do! The problem is one of squarely confronting what is first order. Dietary, curative and behavioral improvements can serve as a temporary bulwark at best, unless the total fecal burden in the environment is reduced, the treatment of water is prioritized and the use of untreated waste water for crop irrigation is controlled.

Dr. Ghazala Mansuri is the Lead Economist at the World Bank.

Pakistan has the lowest female labor-force participation rates in South Asia and urban areas perform especially poorly . Distinct patriarchal norms interlinked with migrant status can affect women’s autonomy and thus labor-force participation in different ways. Recently the Collective for Social Science Research conducted fieldwork for the IGC supported project ‘Women’s Agency and Mobility in the mega-city of Karachi and their Labor-Force Participation’ at three ethnically purposive sites. Many female respondents mentioned instances, relative to patriarchal norms and structures of their communities, which informed their ability to work in the city. In this blog, we attempt to present a current snapshot of some of the diversity of women’s experiences with regards to labor force participation in relation to their community norms and migrant status in Karachi.

Lyari

Lyari is considered one of the oldest neighborhoods in Karachi, and pre-dominantly consists of Baloch and Katchi populations that have long assimilated here. Most young Baloch and Katchi women we interviewed preferred to work and complete their education.3 Two-thirds of younger women have at least completed Intermediate exams and nearly all aspired to hold undergraduate degrees if they didn’t already. In terms of mobility, our female Balochi respondents within Lyari did not report restrictions on mobility from patriarchal figures in the household or street harassment by strangers to the same degree as in other sites where this study was conducted. One respondent who works as a teacher noted that her community respected her a lot for her job, and that when she is walking to work, men actively move out of her way. The extent of mobility and the relative lack of restrictions described by some of the Balochi women around issues of respectability and safety, strictly in a comparative sense with other localities in Karachi, have been surprising for us to learn and are indicative of norms improving overtime, in conjunction with length of the migration period.

In terms of hindrance to employment, an issue most women noted was labor-market discrimination pertaining to ethnicity rather than gender. Nearly all of our respondents complained about rampant racism in the rest of the city against Lyari residents and its adverse effects on their employability. Being Baloch in addition to being a Lyari resident compounded the problem more so.

Baldia

Baldia was selected as a site because it consists of predominantly Pashtun migrants. For women, earning was considered disgraceful and dishonorable because it implied that the household was running on the woman’s income instead of the man’s and the sense of emasculation is a major cause of disrepute for the men in the community. Despite income issues, prospects of poverty still do not seem to mobilize women or let men from their household to relent and let them work or earn. The only instances women resorted to working were in the face of extreme destitution as a result of the absence of a male patriarchal figure and bread-winner in the household, at the expense of disrepute in the community. Older women also hardly held jobs – not even cleaning jobs in households, unlike the other two sites we investigated. Similarly, in terms of education households frequently stopped their daughter’s education after primary school or once they reached puberty, and cited ‘azaad mahol’ (permissive environment), which points towards future potential constraints to labor-force participation.

Korangi

Korangi was chosen due to the ethnically heterogeneous nature of the community and the prevalence of Urdu-speaking and Sindhi populations in the area.
In terms of employment, similar to Lyari, the long assimilated Urdu-speaking and Sindhi women did low-paying private school teaching jobs. If they had income issues they took up better paying, but far more demanding, company or factory jobs. Working in the nearby garment factories was commonly reported by some of the respondents. Older uneducated women usually took up work as cleaners in other households but this was not considered respectful work by them. In contrast, newer Sindhi migrant women were not allowed to work at all, especially if they were young, due to anxieties pertaining to the strangeness of the new and unfamiliar city.

Conclusion

There is indication that patriarchal arrangements relative to migrant status and cultural notions of respectability, determine the extent of women’s participation in the labor market. The relegation of women’s labor force participation only to certain acceptable occupations or by keeping women at home entirely, unquestioningly indicate that gender norms play a role in shaping women’s labor force participation in Pakistan. In an urban context, mobility is complicated by distinct norms pertaining to patriarchy within their communities, geographic and spatial anxieties due to migrant status, and histories of conflict within the city. Our preliminary findings suggest a differentiated employment strategy concerning women’s labor-force participation, underpinned by social-policy that is context-specific to communities within Karachi is needed.

 

Natasha Ansari is a Research Associate at Collective for Social Science Research.

Older residents of Lahore often proffer that in the last few decades the city has changed drastically, and not for the better. While some may dismiss these sentiments as mere nostalgia, the assertion remains empirically observable. It seems as if in the blink of an eye roads that were often deserted just a few years ago now play host to traffic jams that last hours. While the problems that have led to this situation are varied and complex, there is one aspect that demands immediate attention and redress: urban transport.

Among the many difficult decisions that the new PTI government must grapple with, the future of investments in Pakistan’s urban transport infrastructure, particularly in Punjab, will carry salience in the coming years. While the federal government must contend with a potential $8 billion IMF bailout program, and the austerity that is expected to accompany it, it may not sit well with the new Prime Minister’s campaign promises of improvements in human and physical capital, and an overarching promise to improve the quality of life for the country’s 200 million citizens.

One fundamental aspect of this quality of life is the manner in which people and goods move about. Any future story of Pakistan’s growth will be incomplete without an accompanying story of how it moved.

Currently, an estimated 36 percent of the population lives in urban settlements, with the vast majority relying on private means of motorized transport for their mobility needs. According to the National Transport Policy commissioned by the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform in 2017, Pakistan’s population travels almost 400 billion passenger kilometers (pkm) each year, with an expected 5-fold increase to 2 trillion by 2050. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of registered motorcycles grew from less than 5 million to more than 12 million. This increasing dependency on private transport puts a strain on physical infrastructure that the country is not equipped to deal with. The lack of quality infrastructure results in growing congestion, environmental problems, and road accidents, in addition to the negative impacts on economic productivity. Simultaneously, and perhaps more severely, it also impacts citizens’ access to basic services such as healthcare, schooling, housing, and entertainment.

As it is, Lahore’s urban sprawl has become a severe hindrance to public service delivery. Poor service delivery within the center forces people to move out towards the suburbs. As the city expands, service delivery over greater distances becomes even more costly. And if the city continues to spread, it will become even more difficult to maintain connectivity. In addition to the more tangible effects, this has effects on the fabric of society as well. The sense of community, of self, of identity, become things of the past. People grow to become insular, disconnected from everything around them.

As the country’s urban population, continues to grow, the lack of an integrated transportation system will increasingly constrain any aspiration for economic growth. Nowhere will this be more apparent than in Lahore and Karachi, the two biggest urban centers

In the backdrop of the austerity measures that have been announced, the question of whether the country can delay investments in its urban transport infrastructure is an important one that must be answered. This is particularly salient in light of the demands that investments in the country’s human capital place on the budget. Will transport be kicked down the road and become someone else’s problem or will the current government play a more proactive role?

Why investments in Lahore’s public transport must continue

If there was any time for the government to be proactive viz a viz urban transport, it is now. As things stand, many of the high costs associated with the Green Line Metro Bus and the Orange Line Metro Train systems are the costs of bad planning in the past. Despite having a population of over 11 million people, Lahore still lacks an effective and integrated public transport system. While the Green Line has shown signs of success despite its various problems, it still largely operates in a silo. Similar concerns hold for the Orange line. Unless thousands of buses are deployed to operate in mixed-mode traffic, much more than the 1574 planned by the Punjab Mass Transit Authority, we will see no changes in congestion. By rough estimates, Lahore needs at least 9000 buses to meet public transport needs.

The emphasis, however, lies on integration. Public transport needs to become a staple of daily life. It needs to be safe, accessible, and of good quality. For example, people shouldn’t have to first take a rickshaw to the nearest market or town center to catch a bus.

In order for public transport to truly take center-stage in public discourse, we must reframe the narrative around it. Decreasing congestion or making it easier for the car-owning public to travel should not be the primary aims of public transport. It is important to think about public transport in terms of moving workers and goods. Lahore has a varied economic base with about 9000 industrial units and about 42 percent of its work force employed in finance, banking, real estate, community, cultural, and social services. The lack of an integrated public transport network increases both the costs that businesses incur in attracting workers and the costs that workers face in commuting to their places of work. As more and more commuters shift to public transport, it simultaneously becomes easier for goods to be transported within the city. And as it becomes easier to do business and for workers to move about, effects spill over into productivity and growth as well.

At the same time, this urban mass transit should be combined with improvements in intra-city transport networks as well. The World Bank’s Logistic Performance Index for 2018 ranked Pakistan at 122 among 160 countries for the quality of trade and transport infrastructure and quality of logistics service providers. A regular bus service, higher-order transit systems like the Green and Orange lines, and integration with high-quality intra-city rail networks would go a long way in making both the city and the wider region more mobile.

Effective public transit systems require both investments in physical infrastructure, and consistent and coherent policy clarity through land-use and town-planning authorities. While one can appreciate the fiscal constraints posed by a weakening economy, the importance of public transport cannot be understated. Given its long-term impact on economic productivity, it must remain a priority for the new government.

Bakhtiar Iqbal is a Research Assistant at Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR).

Third Tier Organisations (TTOs) are essentially volunteer organisations for community-driven development. They help provide representation to around 30,000 people within the Union Councils that they are located in, and help fill the gaps left by unaddressed community needs. For this reason, TTOs are also known as Local Support Organizations (LSOs). There are around 1,000 TTOs active across Pakistan in the spheres of health, education, microfinance, human rights, community infrastructure, and other sectors. These organisations do not typically generate revenues and thus require funds, either through private fund-raising mechanisms or provision of funds through donors, government, or their Partner Organisations (POs). Leading POs include the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) that is engaged with 60% of the TTOs, followed by Sindh Rural Support Organization (SRSO) (11%), Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP) (8%) and Agha Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) (7%). In particular, POs are the primary support system for the TTOs as they closely monitor and support the aims of the TTOs under their purview to ensure that they operate with as much ease as possible.

Since POs look out for the interests of their TTOs, they provide monetary backing through direct and indirect funding, as well as non-monetary support by way of coordinating their activities across government and line departments. In addition to this, they also supply technical advice or staff trainings when needed.

Empowering and working directly with TTOs can help improve government outreach for public service delivery because TTOs have optimal proximity to the needs of the community for the delivery of innovative and tailored solutions.

Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), a not-for-profit organization, has been championing coordinated efforts to increase the institutional capacity of civil society organisations at the forefront of ending poverty from the grass root level. To this end, PPAF has secured government backing, as well as of the World Bank, in designing and implementing capacity-building development interventions targeting TTOs through their link with a large network of POs.

The workings of a Third Tier Organisation (TTO)

Improving access to health and education, and provision of legal support for attainment of human rights, are the main areas of cooperation between the TTOs and the citizens in Pakistan. To successfully execute the agendas for each TTO category, thorough coordination with the government is often crucial. However, sometimes it is not readily available and TTOs have to pressurize the government to get their support through sit-ins and meetings.

In general, TTOs require external funds in addition to locally-generated funds for catering to the demands of their community, especially for the provision of infrastructure and setting up of vocational training facilities. PO’s and external donor funds help improve the outreach of the particular TTO receiving it, but almost all TTOs continue carrying out local fund-raising in addition to the external financing they might or might not receive. In spite of the majority of TTOs not being beneficiaries of external financing, TTOs have continued to utilize whatever resources at their disposal for the avid pursuance of community development.

How education levels of TTO management impact outcomes and perceptions

TTOs with less educated Executive Body (EB) members are considered to be less mature and are therefore visited more frequently by social mobilizers so that the PO can oversee their activities from afar, in addition to directly visiting them. Further, TTOs with less educated Executive Body (EB) Members apply for less funding than their counterparts run by more educated members, whereas TTOs with a higher proportion of educated members are perceived to be making more progress in their community-driven objectives as reflected in citizen feedback. This might be unfair because even less educated EB members are extremely proactive in their philanthropic pursuits.

EB positions are not always held by educated members alone. All the major EB offices, including that of president and secretary are held by EB members with average education of 10 years. This is an encouraging observation showing that a lack of education is not a barrier to participatory civic engagement.

TTOs work in tandem with their POs through actively reporting to them, either verbally or by submitted progress reports on the criteria identified by the POs. It is quite promising to note that TTOs across all regions reported regularly to their POs. More specifically, it was noted that TTOs with a predominance of higher educated members were found to report less frequently to their POs and Punjab is second to Sindh in terms of having a high proportion of less educated TTO members. Punjab has recorded the highest frequency of reporting to their POs, which might have to do with the lower education levels across its TTOs. EB members in all the other provinces are on average twice as educated as the EB members of Sindh.

POs provide training for improving financial management of TTOs followed by Union Council (UC) plan development with PO respondents reporting that generally participants in these trainings understand the material well. Encouragingly, PO respondents rated around 52% of TTOs performing for the benefit of the people.  TTOs perceived to be the worst performing are located in KP and Balochistan.

Further, there is a direct correlation between the level of activity of the TTO and PO’s contribution in their affairs. This shows that POs either reward TTOs for being more active by providing their all-out support or PO support led to the increased activity of the sponsored TTO.

Where TTO capacity currently stands and the way forward

The most encouraging finding from the base line survey of TTOs across Pakistan is that TTOs are sustainable irrespective of external funding. This suggests that TTOs remain afloat for the purpose of genuine service delivery and are keen to learn through PO trainings and fully utilize all the support they can get. TTOs in KP and Gilgit are most active, with Gilgit generating the highest amount of annual income of 650,000 PKR while TTOs in Balochistan are least active, and also generating the lowest annual income of around 34,000 PKR. Regions such as Gilgit and Punjab receive much higher international donations, in addition to the high involvement of POs in their TTOs’ development. As a result, TTOs in Gilgit also have the highest accumulation of assets, but it cannot be discounted that these TTOs were among the earliest formed in the country. TTOs in Balochistan have also grown significantly as reflected in their growth of financial assets, but in absolute terms are still lagging behind other regions.

Government funding is not significant enough to account for the growth of TTOs probably because government funding is not based on ground-realities of where funds are crucially needed. This is an area where PPAF can help the government make informed decisions for redirecting its funds to resource-strapped TTOs in the poorest regions of the country. Hence, TTO development is largely neglected by the government and needs to be promoted.

This blog post is based on the International Growth Centre’s (IGC) study, “Outsourcing state capacity: A field experiment in Pakistan“.

Sharmin Arif is the Communications Associate at Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR).