Crafting Spaces for Good Water Governance in Pakistan

The most significant investment in improved water governance for Pakistan in recent decades-irrigation management transfer under the PIDA Act of 1997-ended with repeal in 2019 in the province of Punjab. Before embarking on the next major experiment, we wish to examine what the opportunity space for improvement in Pakistan's water governance is. We develop a conceptual model that maps the roles of hydrology, infrastructure, management, governance, and learning in shaping water supply. We are motivated by the overarching question of where the best opportunities to improve water governance in Pakistan lie, and suggest in our analysis that the hydraulic constraints of the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) that have previously been the basis for consideration of scale in water (irrigation) governance are inappropriate. Our key recommendation is instead to identify the key problemsheds for the IBIS as a vehicle for identifying scales of intervention and communities of common water interest (possibly at village, union, or tehsil administrative levels) that can allow irrigators to transcend the rigid hydraulic user groupings that irrigation channels impose, and contribute more meaningfully to good local water governance. Plain Language Summary The Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) is the world's largest gravityfed irrigation system, embedding more than a century of capital investments and crumbling infrastructure. Identifying a robust approach to maintaining the IBIS and reliably meeting water needs for all across its reach has proved challenging over recent decades. In this article we examine the most recent efforts in Pakistan (irrigation management transfer, or IMT, reform) in the context of what we understand good water management and good water governance to be, and suggest how an alternative approach to examining the system (the problemshed approach, where a set of related water problems is used as a basis for identifying the best scale and space for management and governance) could offer more.

Automated summary

The most significant investment in water governance in Pakistan in recent decades, the irrigation management transfer, was repealed in 2019. Before moving on to the next major experiment, it is necessary to explore the potential for improvement in water governance. A conceptual model is developed to understand the roles of hydrology, infrastructure, management, governance, and learning in shaping water supply. The analysis suggests that the previous consideration of scale in water governance is inappropriate, and instead recommends identifying key problem areas to improve local water governance.