Construction of Kalabagh Dam in Pakistan

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Construction of Kalabagh dam over River Indus has politicised in Pakistan.

The reason is that the Sind Province being at the tail end fears that they shall not get their true share of water for irrigation.

What happens in other countries? Is it taken as technical or political?

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8 Answers

  1. Hi Muhammad, 

    I would second the other answers in that politics and proper accounting play major roles in large scale water projects. Even if the technical solution is incredibly well designed the unforeseen can happen, populations can grow, climate patterns can shift, and sooner or later there will not be enough water to go around. This scenario has been played out in the western United States around the Colorado river. In the best case scenario the original contract will be honored and upstream communities will tap into additional water supplies, but if the original contract is not upheld then the downstream communities cannot do much about it. Hence the need for proper accounting and for all communities to be politically invested in upholding the contract. 

  2. Any watershed scale resource conflict has a political and a technical dimension. In my view neither will be resolved until there is a watershed scale natural resource accounting system constructed for the catchment; capable of linking surface and groundwater; and able to operate at a meaningful time step to support management decisions.

    The accounting system must be capable of constructing scenarios to predict or estimate the impact of land use and infrastructure development; to support integrated catchment management and political decision making about who benefits and who pays.

    The accounting system also should form the basis for the construction of more highly specified rights and entitlements to water access.

  3. -need to do Environmental impact assessment

    -need to do socio-economic  assessment

    -need to solve biodiversity offsetting program

    -need to do public consultation

  4. Md. Ilyas Khan, Good thinking.

    Dams have been a part of the economic development model of almost all nations of the world.Hydropower provides a non-polluting source of energy that may be generated in increasing amounts for the growing needs of growing populations.

    The dam dispute provinces are usually solved by a tribunal, a panel pf judges and technical experts or an international tribunal set by the bureaucrats and politicians.  

    The adverse impacts of dam construction are compounded when the affected people belong to indigenous groups with a close or special relationship to the lands on which they live

    Some point to be Noted-

    1. Need for a well prepared rehabilitation policy to be included in the project plans, which is to be adopted uniformly.
    2. Need for proper dialogue with the affected persons during the plan stage itself to prevent problems during execution.
    3. Need to have some flexibility in rehabilitation policies to allow changes as per local needs, and need for quick decision making at the lowest practical level regarding such changes.
    4. Need for political interventions if the process is not effectively in place.

    Establish a panel of experts for the preparation of the resettlement program. Involvement of a panel of reputed resettlement experts, including international experts where necessary, is extremely useful in transferring international best practice to the efforts to design resettlement programs

    There is need for cooperative institutions with representative of concerned government departments and displaced people who have shifted to the rehabilitation site to address the grievances of the people in a proper manner.

    The Kalabagh Dam is a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Indus River at Kalabagh in the Mianwali District of Punjab Province in Pakistan. Intensely debated, if constructed the dam would have 3,600 megawatts  of electricity generation capacity is much politicised. This is the internal dirty politics of Pakistan.It shouldn’t. Energy conservation, water management should be impartial. Kalabagh have great potential to produce Energy. The proposed Kalabagh dam is the back bone of Pakistan like Bhakra dam in India.

    In December 2004, then President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf announced that he would build the dam to serve the larger interest of Pakistan. However, on 26 May 2008, the Federal Minister for Water and Power of Pakistan, Raja Pervez Ashraf said that the "Kalabagh Dam would not be constructed" and that the project had been cancelled due to "opposition from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and other stakeholders, the project was no longer feasible".In 2010 after the worst floods in Pakistani history, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gilani stated flood damage would be minimised if the Kalabagh Dam were built.

    If Pakistan dumps as much as about 21 billion dollars’ worth of water into the Arabian Sea every year because do not have sufficient water conservation system .This amounts to more than half of the total water the Pakistan receives in a year. According to the experts, the problem is that current dam storage facility can only store a total of 30 days of water.

    And if Pakistan quite shockingly has lost 1570 billion cubic meters (BCM) of water in last 38 years which alone could have contributed 636 billion dollars to its agriculture Gross Domestic Product (GDP) along. This huge quantum of water has gone as waste the Arabia Sea and had it been stored in dams, it would have generated 430,000 megawatts of electricity. Then all and none else are responsible because in the last 40 years after Tarbela Dam have not constructed another major storage facility. The experts say that one solution is to construct the controversial, condemned, criticised and politicalised Kalabagh dam. But that project as a matter of bitter is a non-starter because of the resolute opposition of Sindh, Khyber Pukhtoonkhwah and Balochistan provinces and out of four federating units only Punjab is in favour of its construction. Still, it is also deniable fact that that the storage capacity of both Tarbela and Mangla dams is being gradually reduced by the addition of silt.Opposition to the construction of Kalabagh dam is to such an extent that the Provincial Assemblies of Sindh and Khyber Pukhtoonkhwah have adopted resolutions against it more than once during last couple of decades but apprehensions against the construction of Kalabagh dam that it would cause great losses to the two provinces are far from realities and facts and regretfully are merely based more on political and provincial biases and prejudices than facts.

     

    Regards,

    Prem Baboo

  5. Same thing happens in other countries and on international sharing of waters of the same river. The water sharing disputes between tow or more provinces are usually solved by a tribunal, a panel pf judges and technical experts (supposed to be impartial) or an international tribunal set by the bureaucrats and politicians.  In India also there have been such disputes and apprehensions. In such cases if the technical experts take over and try to solve the water sharing problems without giving much importance to the political motives   

  8. Well, according to my understanding,  it has to do with politics. It is only when they agree in a governance structure by percentage distribution of quotas that the technical issues come into play.