A recent seminar in Islamabad, hosted by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), revealed some sobering statistics about the water situation in Pakistan. Experts warned that only 47% of Pakistanis have access to safe drinking water, highlighting the country’s worsening water-quality crisis and its serious impact on public health, productivity, and sustainable development.
During the seminar, titled “The Thirst for Safety: Water Quality and Public Health in Pakistan,” Dr. Hifza Rasheed, the Director General of the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), shared concerning figures. She revealed that Pakistan’s per capita freshwater availability has plummeted from 5,260 cubic metres in 1951 to under 1,000 cubic metres in 2024, pushing the country into the ranks of water-scarce nations. Alongside Dr. Shujaat Farooq, Dean of Research at PIDE, Dr. Rasheed emphasized that unsafe water is responsible for nearly 40% of diseases in the country, calling for urgent, coordinated reforms to address the looming water crisis.
The seminar gathered experts, researchers, and students to discuss the growing threat, with Dr. Farooq noting that while Pakistan has abundant natural resources, contamination, over-extraction, and poor management have turned water insecurity into one of the country’s most critical public health issues. Citing data from UNICEF, Dr. Farooq revealed that almost 70% of households consume contaminated water, leading to 30-40% of illnesses, including diarrhoea, hepatitis, and typhoid. He stressed that the problem is not just scarcity, but the weak coordination and management that exacerbate the crisis.
Dr. Rasheed provided a broader view of the situation, highlighting the overwhelming role of agriculture in water use. Agriculture consumes about 93% of Pakistan’s total freshwater, yet the efficiency of irrigation systems remains below 40%. In Punjab alone, more than 1.3 million tubewells extract about 50 million acre-feet of groundwater every year, causing severe depletion of water resources.
Despite some improvement in recent years, Dr. Rasheed shared that only 47% of Pakistan’s population currently has access to safe drinking water, up from 39% in 2022. However, this is still far from the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.1, which aims for universal access to safe water by 2030. Dr. Rasheed warned that unsafe water contributes to around 53,000 child deaths each year and is a significant factor in the high rates of stunting, which affect 44% of children in the country.
The seminar also highlighted the major sources of water pollution in Pakistan: industrial waste, pesticides, and untreated sewage. Arsenic contamination is particularly severe in southern Punjab and Sindh, while only 38% of wastewater is treated before being discharged into water bodies. Dr. Rasheed emphasized that Pakistan is ranked fifth globally among the most water-insecure countries, with climate change only worsening the situation. She pointed to the devastating 2025 floods, which caused $14.9 billion in damages, further contaminating water sources and increasing the spread of waterborne diseases.
This crisis serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need for coordinated action to address Pakistan’s water challenges. Without effective reforms and sustainable management practices, the country’s water future remains at serious risk, affecting the health and well-being of millions of people.