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Sub-theme: Environment

Panel: Water justice and governance in South Asia

• Pakistan’s Water Challenges: A Human Development Perspective
• Are They Myth or Magic? Assessing the Impact of Public-Private
  Partnerships in the Water Sector of Pakistan
• Reuse of sewerage water in Multan
• Water, Technology and Social Dynamics

Pakistan’s Water Challenges: A Human Development Perspective
Karin Astrid Siegmann* and Shafqat Shehzad**

This paper gives an overview of human and social dimensions of Pakistan’s water policies to provide the basis for water-related policy interventions that contributes to the country’s human development, giving special attention to concerns of women and the poor. While Pakistan may not be a water-scarce country, nonetheless, water stress, poor water quality, and inequitable access to water adversely affect large portions of the population. Considerably less water is available in Balochistan and Sindh, in the tail end of the irrigation distribution system, and for the poor. Though women have a distinct role in water management both for domestic and productive purposes, they are hardly represented in user groups. This suggests that it is water management rather than water availability that is at the core of Pakistan’s water crisis. The unequal distribution coupled with population pressure, urbanization, and progressive industrialization poses a serious challenge to water management in Pakistan in the 21st century

Already now, insufficient access to and poor quality of water resources is a major obstacle to human development in Pakistan. This takes several forms. Water-related diseases, such as diarrhea, hepatitis, dysentery, and malaria are among the main causes of death. Industrial water pollution directly poses health hazards and indirectly threatens sources of livelihood, e.g. for fishing communities. Insufficient water for food production through water-logging and salinity, seepage, unequal distribution in the irrigation system, and droughts leads to drops in agricultural production and thus endangers small farmers’ food security.

Domestic water supply as well as irrigation management saw a shift towards more participatory and privatized approaches during the 1980s and 1990s. Assessments are mixed about the success of the participatory schemes. Overall, coverage with safe drinking water in all provinces dropped from 1995 to 1999. In irrigation, due to a focus on physical targets rather than on capacity building in water user associations (WUAs), positive effects of these schemes were largely appropriated by the economic and political elite, increasing the marginalization of poorer farmers.

The following points are identified as crucial for water interventions that serve human development better:

• A genuinely participatory approach in water management including the voices of all stakeholders, in particular women and the poor;
• A pro-active approach to tackle landed and bureaucratic power structures;
• Capacity building in user groups and in the government agencies rather than investment in infrastructure alone;
• Economic incentives, such as secure property rights, improving access to water for the marginalized and more efficient use of the scarce resource;
• Health implications of water-related interventions should be assessed before embarking on them;
• Water conservation should be given priority over large storage projects. If they are constructed, environmental and social impact assessments should be conducted with true stakeholder participation.

* Dr. Karin Astrid Siegmann is a Junior Research Fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad. She holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Bonn, Germany. Her specialization is in gender and globalization.

** Dr. Shafqat Shehzad is Research Fellow at SDPI and a pioneering health economist in Pakistan, earned her PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Currently, she is involved in the Institute's Health projects.

Are They Myth or Magic? Assessing the Impact of Public-Private
Partnerships in the Water Sector of Pakistan
Peter Lund-Thomsen*

An increased role for public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the developing world was one of the most novel outcomes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. At the same time, the UN Global Compact encourages companies to participate in partnership projects with the UN agencies and civil society organizations. While the number of PPPs and intergovernmental backing for these initiatives are significant, we still need to know more about their effects in the last five years. This paper makes a contribution to on-going debates about whether, and if so, how we can empirically assess the potential and limitations of public-private partnerships in the developing countries.

A fruitful starting point for developing a methodology for PPP impact assessment is to look at approaches developed in related fields. The paper reviews such approaches – classical effect evaluation, realistic approaches to evaluation, and participatory impact assessment – arguing that each offer insights that are relevant to developing a PPP impact assessment methodology. Classical effect evaluations highlight the need for developing a set of criteria that can be applied across national contexts, realistic approaches emphasize the importance of understanding contextual factors, while participatory approaches bring attention to the need for including the views of poorer groupings when assessing PPP impacts. Based on these three observations, the paper then outlines a framework for assessing the impacts of PPPs using the criteria of the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability, equity, and procedural rules of PPPs.

I then use this framework for assessing the impacts of a public-private partnership between 237 leather tanneries, local government agencies, and UNDP/UNIDO in Pakistan that aimed at reducing environmental pollution in the city of Kasur. The application of this framework illustrates that win-win and win-lose outcomes may exist simultaneously, even for the same stakeholder, depending upon which aspect of the PPP is assessed. In designing, implementing, and evaluation PPPs, it is therefore important to recognize that important trade-offs may exist between different aspects of a PPP - for example its efficiency and sustainability instead of assuming that all PPP stakeholders benefit or lose, in all places, all of the time.

* Dr. Peter Lund-Thomsen is associated with the Center for Business and Development Studies, and, Center for Corporate Values and Responsibility at the Copenhagen Business School.

Reuse of sewerage water in Multan
Fatima Khanum*

The freshwater resources of the world are largely under strain. Reuse of wastewater, in concert with other water conservation strategies, can help lessen anthropogenic stresses arising from over-extraction and pollution of receiving waters.

In cities like Multan where water is scarce, poor farmers use untreated wastewater. As industrial pollution is limited, there is scope for improvement in the use of water and nutrients to further optimize the economic benefits of wastewater use.

Four samples of sewerage water of Multan’s disposal stations were collected from Suraj Miani Disposal Station, Vehari Road Disposal Station, and Shujahabad Disposal Station. Sample of agricultural water used for Irrigation was also collected from Shujahabad Disposal Station.

Twenty-three physico-chemical parameters of sewerage were selected for analysis. The analysis was done in order to compare the results with National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS). NEQS were available for only 11 parameters, so only these parameters were compared, while the remaining are not specified (NS). Some essential parameters that were above the NEQS’ limits were BOD5 (158-218 mg/L), COD (389-529 mg/L), TSS (195-291 mg/L) and Lead (0.48- 1 mg/L).

On the whole, all main disposal stations’ treatment facilities are the same. Existing treatment facilities are not just enough to fulfill the preliminary level of treatment. An increase in the city’s water treatment capacity is badly needed. In developing this capacity, care should be taken to invest in appropriate technology that can be managed within the limited available financial and managerial resources.

It is recommended that secondary sewerage water treatment is required for irrigation purpose and construction of sludge carrier. Development and application of guidelines for treated sewerage water reuse provides safeguard livelihoods, public health and the environment practices that limit risks to farming communities, agriculture and environmental quality guidelines should link and implement in an integrated manner.
The paper is based on this study, which has taken into account the following objectives:

• To overcome scarcity of irrigation water through reuse and conservation
• To analyze of physico-chemical parameters of sewerage water in Multan
• To reuse municipal effluent
• To study the treatment of municipal effluent
• To identify impacts of wastewater use in agriculture
• To analyze suitability of water quality parameters for agriculture use
• To give recommendations for the improvement of present condition.

* Fatima Khanum has done her MSc in Environmental Sciences from the University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. Her academic interests are environmental impact assessment, water quality monitoring and environmental management and planning.

Water, Technology and Social Dynamics
By Dipak Gyawali*

In its anarchic ill-discipline, water respects no man-made boundaries, whether they are administrative, political or academic. Water is also not a discipline but the focal point of possibly all disciplines taught in a university, and as such, is inherently interdisciplinary. It is precisely this diffuse nature of water, which makes its management or governance so difficult to understand or effect. Given that water has different useful properties (capacity to flow, dissolve substances, support life) that are differently valued by various social groupings, its management using single efficiency or pricing criteria becomes problematic socially and unsustainable environmentally. To address this challenge, in the recent past, “integrated water resource management” or IWRM had become the conventional mantra. However, IWRM not only became all things to all people, but its championship was stuck in a “template mode” of toolkits and procedures when substantive issues remained in the conflictual politics of allocation. A recent review of water research by the European Union has concluded that IWRM needs to be expanded to CEIWARM -- constructively engaged water resource allocation and management. It argues, from the theory of plural rationality, that the integration of diverse concerns pertaining to water allocation and management does not happen within procedural rationality alone as template and toolkit approach suggests: rather, the integration is the result of a constructive (as opposed to destructive) engagement between different social solidarities (primarily three, viz. risk-managing state bureaucracy, risk-taking innovative market and risk-sensitizing critical civic movements). Because of their plural approach to risk perception, their choice of water technology too differs significantly. This paper explores this conundrum through several examples.

* Dipak Gyawali is Research Director, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation; and, Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, Nepal.