That sweet couplet is:

Machhli jal ki hai raani,
Jeevan jiske hai paani
Haath lagao toh dar jayegi,
Upar laoge toh mar jayegi

Meaning:

Fish is the queen of water,
whose life is water;
It is scared of the touch
and out of water it shall perish

This is not just true for fish, but for any life on the earth. Water is important for the continuation of life on the earth. It is the most basic need of everyone (human being, animal, plant and other microorganisms). Water is the unique source of life, without water we cannot imagine the life here. Life on other planets is not possible just because of the absence of water. It is considered as the most important among other known celestial bodies. Almost three-fourth area of the earth is covered by water and it constitutes around 60-70 % of the living world. It seems that water is endless renewable source on the earth because it is regenerated and redistributed all over the earth through evaporation and rain. It arises a question in our mind that if water is renewable source then why we should worry for water and try to conserve it.

Save water or conservation of water has been very essential to maintain the existence of life on earth because no life is possible without water. Water helps in the continuity of life cycle on earth as an exception in the whole universe as earth is only known planet having water and life. Water is our need throughout the life so only we are responsible to save it.

Death is more possible in the lack of water than the lack of food. It again arises a question in our mind that why we are so late in realizing the need of water saving and conservation. Since the life of each and every living thing on the earth depends on water, then scenario will get worse if useful water become dirty or started reducing. A water looking fresh and drinkable from outside can be mixed with the harmful and toxic elements through various sources like industries, factories, sewer, etc and cause illness and death if ingested by animals, plants or human beings. Here are some tips which really will help us to save water:

• Parents should aware their children about the need of water conservation. They should avoid buying recreational water toys (which require constant stream of water) to their children.
• Everyone should be aware of the water shortage rules and restrictions and strictly follow in their own area.
• Every employee should be active for the water conservation at their own work place and encourage their employer to promote water conservation in other effective ways.
• There should be water conservation awareness and tips for every starter in the orientation manual and training program at schools, colleges, work place, offices, institutions, etc.
• Water conservation techniques should be promoted on every news media such as TV, newspaper, radio, FM, community newsletters, bulletin boards, banners, etc.
• People should be more active in their area to report (to their owner, local authorities, water management of district) any problems related to water loss through broken pipes, errant sprinklers, open hydrants, abandoned free-flowing wells, etc.
• Water conservation awareness should be highly developed and promoted especially in the schools to aware children means future of the nation.
• School students should be assigned to prepare projects on water conservation or given this topic during any competition like debate, discussion, essay writing or speech recitation.
• It should be promoted at tourism level so that tourists and visitors can be aware of and understand the need for water conservation.
• As being educated citizens we should encourage our friends and neighbors to join the water conscious community.
• Everyone should make a task related to water saving and try to complete by the end of day strictly.

Clean water is very essential component of life, so we need to conserve water for the future safety. If we save water; we save life and save whole world on the earth. Water is called as the universal solvent so it is a key component ensures quality of lives. We should join our hands together and take a pledge of using water according to need only without contaminating it. We should save our water from the water pollution by inhibiting the mixing of industrial wastes and other wastes into the water.

Rainwater harvesting should be initiated by the people at village level. Rain water can be saved by making small or big ponds with proper maintenance. Young students need to be more aware and concentrate on the issues and solutions. Water insecurity and scarcity has affected people’s living in many countries of the developing world.

People have started understanding the value of clean water however not trying completely to save water. Saving water is good habit and every one of us should try their best to save water for the continuation of life here. Some years ago, no one was selling water on the shop however time has been changed now a lot and we can see the pure water bottles availability on the shops everywhere. Earlier, people were shocked by seeing water selling on the shops however now, they are ready to buy pure water bottle worth 20 rupees or more for their good health. We can clearly imagine that, in the near future there would be much shortage of clean water all over the world. Awareness programs should be run to let common people know about the potential problems caused by the drinking or normal water scarcity. There is urgent need to eradicate the people’s attitude about water wastage.

The post Save Water: Secure The Future! appeared first on Dunya News Blogs.

The study, which comes from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), says that the effects of climate change will be combined with an ever-increasing number of people to trigger intense competition for increasingly scarce resources. This can lead to regional instability and social unrest.

Future water wars cannot be neglected. Approximately, Eight hundred million people are lacking clean drinking water around the globe.

As droughts and crises multiply, academics have begun grappling with the darker question of whether such shortages will push citizens – and even countries – into hostile factions of water-rich and water-poor. By mid-century, some of the world’s most populous, troubled regions are predicted to be dangerously water-scarce, including southern and central Asia, the Middle East and northeast Africa.

Tensions are rising as shortages intensify, says Zeitoun, noting simmering water conflicts along the Tigris and Brahmaputra, and intra-state conflicts in China’s Yellow Basin and the Basra region of Iraq. Two Pakistani provinces, Punjab and Sindh – the last in line for the Indus water before it reaches the sea – are routinely at odds over water. In Sindh, many fishers and farmers reliant on the rapidly declining delta ECOSYSTEM have simply given up and fled to cities – water refugees. In Darfur, where rainfall is down 30 per cent over 40 years, evaporating water holes and disappearing pasture helped push farmers and herders into civil war.

The Indus River is the primary source of freshwater for most of Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the fastest-growing nations in the world. It had a population of 210 million now.The country is grappling with the same sorts of growing pains that its neighbour, India, is experiencing. The year 2025 has been marked as the year when Pakistan — if it doesn’t mend its ways soon — will turn from a “water-stressed” country to a “water-scarce” country. Warnings about water running out have been issued separately by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR). And as the alarm bells began to ring, the chief justice of Pakistan launched a campaign to build the Diamer Bhasha and Mohmand Dam. In his inaugural speech, Prime Minister Imran Khan, too, has announced his backing for the plan.

But Pakistan has an extraordinary problem looming on the horizon: water scarcity, which has devastated other countries in the sub-tropics in the past decade, is now quite real. And a solution to the crisis is not entirely within the country’s control.

An IPCC special report on climate change adaptation says that at least a billion people in sub-tropical regions of the world like Pakistan, India, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Somalia will face increasing water scarcity.

Glacier melting is responsible for roughly half of the water flowing in the Indus, making the situation worse. The health of the Himalayas in the face of the Earth’s changing climate is a real, and growing, concern.

“Given the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the Indus River… and growing tensions with upriver archenemy India about use of the river’s tributaries, it’s unlikely that Pakistani food production will long keep pace with the growing population,” Steven Solomon, Writer Of Water comprising the epic struggle for wealth, power, and civilization. He also told that Middle East would be the first region to confront the issue and which actually apparent as of now Yemen, wrote in The New York Times.

Just as we’ve seen in Yemen—where water riots ripped the country apart and led to a civil war that has destabilized the country in the midst of political chaos—wealthy, politically connected landowners in Pakistan have also been accused of siphoning off far more than their fair share of freshwater in upriver Punjab. There have been water riots over lack of water and electricity in Karachi.

“The future looks grim,” Solomon concludes. “Eventually, flows of the Indus are expected to decrease as global warming causes the Himalayan glaciers to retreat, while monsoons will get more intense. Terrifyingly, Pakistan only has the capacity to hold a 30-day reserve storage of water as a buffer against drought.” But experts believe that India’s efforts to dam up the Indus could ultimately destroy Pakistan’s ability to feed its population.

If both countries collaborated on a series of giant, large-scale dams that were built to rotate water use to different regions, tensions could be reduced. More than 700 billion gallons of water are pulled from the Indus River every year to grow this cotton.

“Pakistan’s entire economy is driven by the textile industry,” says Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “The problem with Pakistan’s economy is that most of the major industries use a ton of water—textiles, sugar, wheat—and there’s a tremendous amount of water that’s not only used, but wasted.”

Water crisis in Pakistan and overall the world has become adverse than never before. All this should serve as a clarion call to our leaders who are busy in power politics and political squabbling. If the incumbent leadership does not build an adequate number of small and large dams, the country will face recurrent drought and threatening floods in the future. Be it climate-change, limited storage capacity, trans-boundary dispute or mismanagement of water; government entities ostensibly lack co-ordination to tackle issue of water wars.

At the end, construction of reservoirs, using advanced telemetry, raising height of existing dams to increase capacity, using advanced technologies e.g. drip farming for water conservation, strengthening the role of UN with constitutional and international law amendments, national way policy reviews are a few ways to counter this emergency with practical futuristic approach.

The post Future Water Wars appeared first on Dunya News Blogs.

There are 165 million malnourished children under five years around the globe. Malnutrition accounts for at least half of all childhood deaths worldwide. Child malnutrition is generally only a problem of developing and under developed countries. Malnutrition is the fundamental cause of morbidity and mortality among the children. Almost half of the mortality in children around the globe is attributed to under nutrition. It also poses a risk to children’s physical and mental development, which results in poor academic achievement. It has been estimated that 170 million (30%) of children under the age of five in the world are moderately or severely stunted, and 110 million (19%) are moderately or severely underweight. In Asia, 51 million (8%) children under five years of age are wasted.

Pakistan has been reported to have one of the highest levels of prevalence of child malnutrition compared to other developing countries. According to the National Nutrition Survey, 33%of all children were underweight, nearly 44% were stunted, 15% are wasted, 50%were anemic, and 33%were anemic (iron deficiency). Children who are undernourished are more susceptible to the effects of infectious disease compared to children who are adequately nourished. Infections can in turn lead to more undernourishment as food intake is decreased during infection and this turns into a vicious cycle. One of the possible causes of such status could be declined production of food. Many landscapes that were once fertile are deemed barren due to environmental pollution caused by mankind. This in turn leads to less land that is available for farming.

Every year in Tharparkar, 1,500 die due to infections, malnutrition, and lack of proper medical facilities in the remote area, according to the health department. Pakistan is the riskiest place to be born as measured by its new born mortality rate. A baby born in Pakistan is almost 50 times more likely to die during his or her first month than a baby born in Japan, Iceland and Singapore.

The reasons behind malnutrition are poverty, unawareness, population growth, political instability, loss of food stock due to poor harvest and natural calamities are some of the important factors causing malnutrition amongst children. Malnutrition in Pakistani children has been directly linked to illiteracy of mothers, low family income and larger family size. Maternal undernourishment is also a contributing factor to babies being born with low-birth-weight. The increased basal metabolic rate due to acute and chronic illnesses may also precipitate the pre-existing malnutrition.

To solve the problems causing malnutrition among Pakistani children, the following measures are suggested. Various methods like the use of fertilizers would give a better crop. Policies should be made by the government to provide food security to the masses. Educational programs should be planned that elucidated the importance of various components in a child’s diet and also inform people about cheaper food alternatives that can provide them with vital nutrients. Controlling the growth of population and providing family planning guidance will lead to more food availability. Building the human capital of women and girls is important in correcting nutritional status of the nation and globe. General education and practical skills will broaden the range of choices women can make and give them more influence within their households and communities. Building women’s human capital makes them more productive workers, better mothers and stronger citizens. In the perspective of child health outcomes, given that women are typically the primary caretakers of children, redirecting of decision-making roles in favour of women has the potential to improve child health outcomes.

The post Malnutrition in Pakistani Children appeared first on Dunya News Blogs.

There is a lot more we all need to do, together, in this regard. From the legislation onwards to the compliance on the ground and till the water distribution and the ultimate consumption, it’s really a long but a well-coordinated trail of actions that need to be taken seriously not only by the Government but by all its consumers at large.

The very first action we even can start doing right now is nevertheless the water preservation i.e. saving the existing water. Yes! Every one of us must start saving the water from now onwards. Using water responsibly is a key trick to save water. Remember! The water once gone to sewage is wasted because we do not have any mechanism to filter and recycle the sewer water for its further extended utilization. This would undoubtedly be nothing less than our greater contribution in slowing down the pace of water depletion from the eco-system until the scientific structural and nonstructural measures for avoiding the potential of a water crisis would have been taking place in parallel.

While talking about the long-term and permanent solution to the potential water crisis, promulgation of an effective but coordinated legislation followed by a complete manual of corresponding water policies and their proper implementations across the board is fundamentally important. The legislation has to address the transboundary water conflicts with neighboring nations like India and Afghanistan, periodic desilting/maintenance of rivers & reservoirs, riverbed encroachments & modifications, construction of new dams & water infrastructure, water theft, fair water distribution, watershed management, preservation of subsurface water, rainwater harvesting, water filtration/recycling, water conservation strategies, floodplain management, and further research to explore new water-security & water-economy based avenues for the future. It’s quite obvious that competent hydrological engineers, subject specialists, and geologists need to be taken on board while drafting the legislation, working papers, concerned policies, and the implementation plans/programs.

Moving along, the establishment of a completely autonomous Water Regulatory & Management Authority (WRMA) for astringent on the ground regulation of the promulgated legislation and its proper implementation, is highly recommended. Such an authority would reinforce the existing water-based bodies including Indus River System Authority (IRSA), Water & Power Development Authority (WAPDA), Pakistan Commissionerate for Indus Water (PCIW), and Federal Flood Commission (FFC) to bring about much-improved results in managing the waters of the country efficiently.

In compliance with the legislation, when it comes to the structural measures; private corporates and entrepreneurs should highly be encouraged to invest in these projects through offering them attractive “Return on Investments(ROIs)”, subsidies in taxes, low interest rates, and easy terms of Reference (TORs) without surrendering Government’s role as a regulator, in packaged with Public Private Partnership Initiative (PPPI). This will not only lessen the burden on the Government’s shoulders rather it would stir the sense of ownership among the public ensuring the maximum success of the project in return. Make it a business and the businessmen know how to make businesses function and perform well.

Undoubtedly, information & technology (IT) has revolutionized all walks of our lives. Before concluding the discussion, it’s pertinent to touch here a little about the significance of modern day’s IT in revolutionizing the water management. Through the inclusion and proper employment of software and synchronized hardware for better gauging, handling, and management of discharge(s), flow rate(s), level(s), surface/groundwater-surface profile(s), database recording, various analysis, communication(s), training(s), Education, and awareness can bring about wonders beyond the borders. Hydrological Engineering Centre’s River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) is a software that is being used in the United States by the United States Corps of Engineers to perform one-dimensional steady flow, one and two-dimensional unsteady flow calculations, sediment transport/mobile bed computations, and water temperature/quality modeling as part of the overall water management in the country. Use of Geographic Information System (GIS) & Remote Sensing (RS) can put us thousand steps ahead in achieving a spectacular water management for the greater good of Pakistan.

Water Management is nothing less than a science so is hard to be summed up in a few paragraphs here, but this article can serve as a sincere and humble technical advice for our decision makers in formulating a long-term tangible solution against the potential water-crisis which is around the corner and for every one of us to understand its gravity.

It’s high time to act now!

The post Water Crisis around the Corner: Let’s Act Now appeared first on Dunya News Blogs.

Day Zero is plan B of the South African government . You may ask, what plan A is ? It is the set of rules that citizens have to follow now-a-days . And they are stricter than you think!

Currently, each citizen of Cape Town can only use 50 liters of water (13 gallons). And if someone will use more than that, he/she will be fined and will have to agree to install a device that cuts off the water supply when the usage will cross the threshold . Initially, the government predicted “Day Zero” in the month of March 2018 , then the officials made another analysis and pushed it back to April and then after another study to May 2018 and finally now they have told that it will be sometime in 2019.

Cape Town survives on rain water. The city has 6 large water reservoirs. The City of Cape Town describes Day Zero as the point when these main reservoirs will reach a storage level of 13.5% . People will have to stand in long queues to collect daily water ration that will be 25 liters per person per day. The reason why officials have postponed Day Zero is because people are saving more water.

It is important to mention the contribution of Cape Town’s farmers. Now, as the city is facing water crisis, farmers have reduced water usage to irrigate the fields. With Day Zero pushed out, citizens have increased the usage. City authorities are warning if people will continue to waste water, Day Zero could soon become a definite date again. Authorities are also planning to increase water price to reduce the demand. Situation is critical. People and economy are suffering because of severe water scarcity.

What Cape Town is facing now, Pakistan may face after few years. And that will be extremely horrific. According to Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources, Pakistan may run dry by 2025!  We take natural resources for granted without even considering the fact that they are scarce! There is nothing like a free lunch and same applies to the natural resources.

Just because now you have access to free drinkable water and that you may use it without even thinking of saving it, won’t preclude the working of this basic economic principle! With no substitute at all, demand for water is perfectly inelastic. Absolute scarcity of it will cause its price to skyrocket! Imagine going to the market to buy potable water for (suppose) Rs 500 a liter! If you earn in millions then that won’t be an issue in short run but if you belong to a middle class or below middle class then get ready to die of thirst! With no water at all, how one can think of agricultural output! Pakistan’s economy is predominantly agricultural in character. It engages 45 % of country’s labor force and contributes 21 % to the GDP. Ultimately, all we are going to get is millions of human casualties because of severe dehydration and malnutrition and crashed economy!

According to the experts, in last 58 years, Pakistan hasn’t built new dams. We can only store water for 30 days. There are hundreds of millions of people across the globe with no access to potable water. According to World Wildlife Fund, 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to drinkable water! Freshwater bodies are either drying up or getting polluted.

International Monetary Fund has reported that Pakistan is the third most water stressed country in the world. Most of the water is consumed and wasted by agricultural sector. Water used by it is largely untaxed, which makes it difficult for the government to recover the operational and maintenance cost of its supply.

Improper and highly inefficient methods of irrigation are the main reason behind water shortage. Farmers use more water than it is necessary to irrigate the fields. Agricultural sector is also responsible of water pollution. Pesticides and Fertilizers that wash away from fields generate considerable water pollution which makes fresh water undrinkable. Pollutants leaching into groundwater have affected its quality. Population growth is also one of the major causes of water scarcity. Open defecation and dumping of industrial waste in freshwater bodies also add to the pollution of water.

Every year Pakistan wastes Rs25 billion worth of water, as it only conserves 14 million acre feet out of 145 million acre feet that it receives annually. Country’s per capita water availability per year has been reduced by 80 %. According to PCRWR report, 69 % of water supplies do not meet the National Standards for Drinking Water Quality.

In recent years we have seen public-private sector coalition to help farmers saving water. Nestlé Pakistan in partnership Punjab Agriculture Department through World Bank SMART program is encouraging farmers to apply drip irrigation on their fields. Drip irrigation allows water to drip slowly to the roots either from above or below the soil with the sole objective of minimizing water evaporation, as it places water directly to the root zone. By the end of 2017, drip irrigation method has been used to water 68 acres of land and that ultimately helped the country saving 140 million liters of fresh water. Not only drip irrigation method is being used for economizing water usage on agriculture but also methods like furrow irrigation and sprinkler based techniques, to water the fields, have been applied. Smart soil moisture sensors are also being developed that measure soil moisture and store regular data updates in a cloud server from where farmers can get information about the area of the field that has to be watered , thus helping them efficiently irrigating the land .

We may say that if such technologies are being used, how come the nation may face absolute scarcity of water by 2025? Actually, we need to expand the application of such methods across the country. Government has to prioritize projects for the conservation of water . We need more artificial water reservoirs. Dams with large water storage capacities have to be built. Work has to be done to preserve the quality of available fresh water. Scarcity of water is among the main problems faced by Pakistan today. Question arises, what lawmakers are waiting for? Do they want to see Pakistan suffer? Unfortunately , it seems so !

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