From the failed Independent:
Pakistan could face drought in the near future according to experts in the country, who have warned the country will approach the “absolute scarcity” level of water by 2025.
The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) made the grim forecast in a new report which claimed the country touched the “water stress line” in 1990 before crossing the “water scarcity line” in 2005.
An unnamed government official in the south Asian country told Pakistani media that urgent research is needed to find a solution – but warned of a lack of available government funds.
Pakistan has the world’s fourth highest rate of water use but is dependent on water from a single source – the Indus River basin in India – and rainfall has been steadily declining, with some experts claiming this is down to climate change.
Read full story here: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/pakistan-could-face-mass-droughts-173900389.html
Given that we keep hearing about floods in Pakistan, including one this summer, I would suspect that the real problem is increasing water demand, coupled with poor organisation.
This suspicion seems to be confirmed by the actual data from the Pakistan Met Office.
Below are the drought monitors from their last six annual reports:
http://www.ndmc.pmd.gov.pk/index_files/Page327.htm
The vast part of the country has actually had wetter than normal weather since 2011. The only exception appears to be the extreme south-west, most of which is not even in the Indus basin.
There is a possibility that rainfall is reduced over the border with India, at the extreme north of the Indus River basin in Kashmir. But there is no evidence of this either from the India Met Office data.
It looks like another case of “blame it on climate change”, which does not stand up to scrutiny.
FOOTNOTE
In true Independent style, the Independent is rehashing a story which was originally covered in May 2016, for instance here.
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