Pakistan is exhibiting increasingly severe demand, supply, and structural scarcities of key natural resources, as well as the resource capture and ecological marginalization associated with these scarcities.

Population Growth

Today, Pakistan is the tenth most populous nation in the world with more than 128 million inhabitants. Its current population growth rate of 3.1 percent implies a population doubling time of 22 years. Given present trends and the absence of an effective population policy, the population will likely exceed 200 million by 2010.⁴⁷

There is considerable variation in population distribution. Some arid areas of Baluchistan average as few as 2 persons per square kilometer, while irrigated districts of the Punjab average 400 persons. Water and soil availability are the chief reasons for such variation. Thus, areas of low density have little spare absorption capacity.⁴⁸

The high growth rate (Table 1) is largely due to sustained high fertility coupled with rapid declines in mortality brought on by the introduction of modern health care methods and improved nutrition. Over the past 24 years, Pakistan's fertility rate has not dropped below 6.25 and currently stands at 6.6.⁴⁹ Interestingly, reductions in infant morality have not been as dramatic as those for the general population as a whole. Many children continue to perish due to diseases contracted through unsanitary habits, bad water, and contaminated food. High infant mortality, along with a lack of education among poorer groups (particularly women), has discouraged family planning, and kept birth rates high.

Efforts at family planning have met with limited success, particularly in rural areas. Pakistan now has a population pyramid with an extremely wide base. About 45 percent of the population is under 15, while 55 percent is under 20 years of age.⁵⁰ This demographic structure results in steadily rising demands for social services, especially schools, housing, and jobs.

The impacts of rapid population growth are pervasive. They include the sub division of rural agricultural holdings, which decreases the amount of cultivated land per rural inhabitant; the denudation of well-forested hillsides; the migration of villages en masse from high mountain pastures to valleys; and the migration of large numbers of young people to cities.⁵¹

Demand and Supply-Induced Scarcity

Land. Pakistan comprises 88.2 million hectares of land, of which 61.8 million has been surveyed. Approximately 20 million hectares is used for agriculture, while some 31 million hectares is forest, rangeland, unutilized, or unutilizable (Figure 3: Map of Agroecological Regions).⁵²

Since independence, the area of land under cultivation has increased by approximately 40 percent.⁵³ Yet today the country is approaching its physical limits. Of the total surveyed land area, less than 20 percent retains the potential for intensive agricultural use, while 62 percent is classified as having low potential for crop, livestock, and forestry production. Overall, land categorized as cultivable represents less than one-quarter of the country's total area. Today, nearly all of this land is already under cultivation. Very little additional land is available for the expansion of agriculture.⁵⁴

Shortages of arable land do not, of course, preclude an increase in agricultural production. Practices such as double-cropping, increases in labor productivity, and better technical inputs (such as new grains) can boost agricultural output. But a number of forces have combined to prevent the realization of the country's full agricultural potential. These include poor water management practices (which restrict double-cropping), a system of absentee landlords, the fragmentation of landholdings, the reduction in farm size from generation to generation as farming populations rise, poor access to agricultural capital, poor technology transfer to farmers, and a lack of information concerning the use of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides.⁵⁵ The heavy use of fertilizers (Table 2) particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, has also left soils deficient in a number of nutrients essential to plant growth.⁵⁶

Soil maps of the central-western region (an area representing approximately 40 percent of the country) reveal land affected by light water and wind erosion, a loss of topsoil, and some terrain deformation. In the southwest and along the southern coastal fringe west of Karachi, wind-eroded and salinized soils predominate. Desert soils, highly salinized soil, and some severely eroded areas are found along the Indo-Pakistani border, and soil in the lowlands of the Indus River valley also suffers from salinization. Meanwhile, lands in and around the northeastern tip of the country are classified as "stable" under normal conditions.⁵⁷

The most important causes for reduced land productivity are water and wind erosion, salinity and sodicity,⁵⁸ waterlogging, flooding, and loss of organic matter (Tables 3 - 5). According to the government's Report on the Pakistan National Conservation Strategy, 17 percent of surveyed soils (which include most of the soils usable for agriculture, forestry, or ranching) are affected by water erosion, 7.6 percent by wind erosion, 8.6 percent by salinity and sodicity, and 8.6 percent by flooding and ponding; fully 96 percent suffer from less-than-adequate organic matter. These problems often occur simultaneously and produce synergistic impacts on agricultural productivity. Soils can suffer from both water and wind erosion, and poor organic-matter content is universal, reducing the potential productivity of the best as well as the worst of soils.⁵⁹

Water. An arid and semi-arid country, Pakistan's water sources have always been limited. The country has regularly experienced critical water shortages, which lead to power blackouts and also to inadequate supplies of irrigation water for the main crop-growing season. To compensate, a finely balanced system of water management for irrigation, electricity, and industry has been developed. The system is shaped in part by the Indus Waters Treaty. Signed in 1960 by India and Pakistan following long-standing water disputes,⁶⁰ the treaty gives Pakistan control over the Indus and its western tributaries the Jhelum and Chenab, while India controls the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej branches in the east. The treaty also allowed Pakistan to construct two large storage and hydroelectric dams: the Tarbela on the Indus and the Mangala on the Jhelum, as well as a system of smaller dams, inter river canals, and irrigation canals. This irrigation network now services about 16 percent of the country and is one of the largest such systems in the world. As much as 65 percent of agricultural land is irrigated, accounting for about 90 percent of the country's food and fiber production.

Approximately 175 billion cubic meters of water enters the Indus Basin annually. Of this, 128 billion cubic meters is diverted for irrigation purposes to the canal heads, while remaining water flows to the sea. Although this flow to the sea is needed to maintain a viable river ecosystem, especially in the Indus estuary, experts agree that much of it could be stored for irrigation.⁶¹ Yet, Pakistan currently lacks the necessary storage capacity, in part because of heavy silting of reservoirs,. The absence of this water is one of the factors preventing the nation from attaining food self-sufficiency.⁶²

The existing irrigation system is also highly inefficient. Of the 128 billion cubic meters diverted for irrigation, about 52 billion cubic meters is lost to seepage and evaporation from canals and watercourses. This loss is a major cause of waterlogging and salinity of soils in the Indus Basin. Vertical pumping systems used for drainage are proving unsustainable: the recycled water contains chemicals that produce sodicity⁶³ and reduce the life of pumping machines.

No serious effort has been made to develop a drainage system to parallel the irrigation system. In Punjab alone there are about 280,000 tube wells pumping 51 billion cubic meters of water and using about 2,400 megawatts of subsidized power. One hundred million metric tons of salts have been pumped up in the process.⁶⁴ The salts have decreased crop productivity in 1.2 million hectares of prime land in the Canal Command Area, which is about 5 percent of the total agricultural land in Pakistan. Another 2.1 million hectares of salt-affected lands exist in Punjab's non-sweet water areas. The result is lower crop productivity.⁶⁵

Beyond the Indus Basin, sharp drops in the water tables of underground aquifers - of 15 centimeters to over 60 centimeters (cm) per year - are occurring in a number of areas. The water table in the Northern Basin of the Quetta Valley is falling at the extraordinary rate of 200 cm per annum, while the Southern Basin has registered a yearly decline of 60 cm.⁶⁶ The groundwater table in Lahore is falling at a rate of 30 cm per year in the central part of the city due to excessive withdrawals by a growing urban population.⁶⁷

An inadequate sewage treatment infrastructure adds to problems. Many of Pakistan's rivers are now badly polluted with domestic sewage and industrial waste. A recent study of the Kabul River (near Peshawar) reveals that parts of the river and some of its tributaries have become open sewers.⁶⁸ Much of this polluted river water is used for drinking and irrigation. In fact, inadequate drinking water represents a long-standing and serious problem in several parts of the country.⁶⁹ It is increasingly common to see people in many parts of the country walking for kilometers to fill a container with water.⁷⁰

Forests. As legally defined by the government, areas designated as "forests" include both natural and plantation forests, as well as areas with closed forest cover and open cover; the definition even includes some territory with little tree cover.⁷¹ Clearer are the designations of "production" and "protected" areas offered in the Forest Act of 1927. Production forests are used mainly for the direct material products of their growth. They have a high tree density and, in most instances, a closed tree canopy. They represent the chief source of timber and currently make up 27.6 percent of total forest area.⁷² Protected areas are largely intended to guard against soil erosion and today account for a full 72.4 percent of total forest area.⁷³

Such distinctions have nonetheless done little to prevent the decline of forest areas generally. Over the past 75 years, forests have decreased from 14.2 percent to 5.2 percent (4.57 million hectares) of Pakistan's total land area, with less than 3 percent currently under tree cover. Closed cover forests account for under 1 million hectares.⁷⁴

Efforts at afforestation and watershed management have not kept pace with increased demand for timber and excessive cutting and overgrazing. Between 1974 and 1985, timber supplies from state forests declined by 45 percent, in part because of reduced forest area. The total loss of forest occurred at a rate of 0.4 percent from 1981 through 1984 and has now decreased to 0.2 percent per annum.⁷⁵ This figure translates into the destruction of 7,000 to 9,000 hectares of forested land every year.⁷⁶ Today, Pakistan imports about 30 percent of the timber it uses.⁷⁷

The heavy deforestation stems from a number of factors. During both the colonial and the post independence periods, entrepreneurs took over and commercially exploited large forest tracts to satisfy the demands of a growing rural and urban population. With the development of canals, hundreds of thousands of hectares of riverine, scrub, and forest land in the Indus plains were cleared for agriculture. Energy demand also has increased pressure on the forests. Wood currently meets approximately one half of national energy requirements. Annual consumption now stands at an estimated 19.70 million cubic meters and is expected to rise to 30.66 million cubic meters by the year 2000. According to the 1980 housing census, approximately 70 percent of all households in Pakistan relied upon wood for cooking and heating, with dependence reaching 80 percent in rural areas.⁷⁸ Given continuing high population growth, reports of a further rise in timber demand for cooking and heating are hardly surprising.⁷⁹

The negative consequences of uncontrolled forest exploitation are ever more obvious. They include serious soil erosion and sedimentation, desertification of once-productive upland areas, the silting up of waterways in the plains (making them more prone to flooding), and marked scarcities of fuelwood and building timber (creating an economic burden on low-income communities).⁸⁰ The decline in tree cover has already resulted in a large reduction in watershed and reservoir efficiency. Except for a small headpond with daily storage capacity, Pakistan's important Warsak Reservoir - built in 1960 - is now completely silted up. The water's silt burden has caused serious wear on all rotating parts of the reservoir's hydroelectric generating station, and the main powerhouse structure is suffering from alkali-aggregate reaction.⁸¹ Efforts at watershed management should lengthen the life of more recent projects, such as the Mangela and Tarbella Reservoirs; yet reports indicate that, even in these cases sedimentation is occurring at a rate which could render them inoperative in as little as forty years.⁸²

These processes have major implications for the availability of water for irrigation and power generation. Indeed, some experts predict large deficits of water and electricity in the future, with considerable impact on agriculture and the economy. According to the World Bank, while less than 10 percent of Pakistan's hydroelectric potential has actually been exploited, further development is heavily constrained by silting.⁸³ Nevertheless, projected stagnation in growth of supplies of natural gas Pakistan's chief energy source - is likely to heighten demand for electricity.⁸⁴ Energy supplies have been growing at 7.2 percent per year, while demand is increasing at 8.3 percent annually,⁸⁵ and the country has already experienced serious loadshedding due to electricity shortfalls.⁸⁶

The effects of flooding are even more salient. Floods have not only produced loss of life and property, but also serious damage to irrigation networks, crops, and transportation and communication systems and utilities. Between 1973 and 1978, a succession of floods in Punjab and Sind affected over 12 million people and over 8 million hectares of land and destroyed an estimated 70 percent of the total standing crop.⁸⁷ More recently, in 1992, landslides, accelerated soil erosion, and large quantities of felled, unclaimed timber moving down the Kunhar, Siran, Daur, and Jhelum Rivers in Hazara resulted in widespread destruction of lives and infrastructure. According to a report released by the Sungi Development Foundation, the felled timber:

destroyed approximately 30 to 35 water mills on the banks of the Kunhar River in the Kaghan Valley, demolished bridges used as links between remote villages and commercial centers, damaged much needed sources of irrigation, and wiped out precious agricultural land.⁸⁸

Overall, Pakistan's Economic Survey reported devastating floods as a chief cause of a 3.9 percent drop in agricultural output for fiscal 1992-93. Direct losses from flooding were estimated at PRs. 40 million (approximately US$1.5 million) for that year.⁸⁹

Sources of Structural Scarcity

Regional resource disparities have always existed. Of Pakistan's four provinces, both Punjab and Sind contain the majority of the nation's population, industrial capacity, irrigation networks, and prime agricultural land. In contrast, the NWFP and Bal-uchistan are less endowed. Long-standing distributional inequities also exist among groups, including between landlords and peasants in rural areas, among classes in the urban context, and among ethnic communities throughout the country.

As discussed above, the state has often exacerbated these inequalities rather than ameliorated them. Pakistan's overdeveloped military-bureaucratic oligarchy is marked by corruption and patronage and an almost total lack of accountability. Truly independent and representative political institutions have never developed at any level of governance.

This situation has virtually guaranteed that economic and social policy has been unbalanced or excessively influenced by parochial interests. The elite and middle class represent narrow strata of society but control an exceedingly large share of resources and industry. Even in Pakistan's most troubled cities, they ensure themselves a comfortable lifestyle and access to services through political pressure and bribes, while those in less fortunate areas are ignored.⁹⁰ High- and middle-income groups in fact absorb the vast majority of urban resources, with the wealthiest 25 percent of the urban population receiving almost two-thirds of housing and services.⁹¹

The military is especially privileged. Over the years, military personnel have become deeply entrenched in the economic life of the country, heading up numerous corporations in the public sector and strongly represented on the boards of many private companies. According to Ayesha Jalal, each of the three defense services have trusts and foundations with extensive investments in the national economy. For instance the Fauji Foundation - run by the army - owns eight manufacturing units that produce sugar, fertilizer, cereals, liquid gas, and metals; in addition, it has a gas field, transportation companies, schools, hospitals, and investments in defense production industries. All are exempt from taxation and legislation covering the manufacturing sector and are not required to disclose their assets or make shares available for public subscription.⁹²

Meanwhile, in rural areas, large landowners dominate life and derive the majority of benefits from agriculture. State policy often strengthens their position. For instance, while policies implemented during Pakistan's "green revolution" significantly boosted overall agricultural productivity through the use of high-yield crops, fertilizer, and irrigation, these technologies favored large landholders (those with over 40 hectares). Large, well-connected landholders thrived, while many smaller farmers were eventually left landless.⁹³

Land reforms have failed to alter fundamentally the highly skewed distribution of rural wealth. Both in 1959 and in 1972, reform legislation imposed ceilings on individual rather than family ownership, which ensured that the vast bulk of land under cultivation remained in the hands of a privileged minority.⁹⁴ According to one source, a mere 1 percent of landless tenants and small peasant holders directly benefited from the reforms.⁹⁵ Still another notes that between 1972 and 1980, the share of total agricultural land held by the poorest 40 percent of agricultural households declined from 11 percent to 10 percent, while the share of the top 20 percent jumped from 55 percent to 57 percent. Rural income distribution moved in the same direction.⁹⁶

Recent evaluation of the relationship between resources and society in Pakistan suggests little change in the patterns of inequality producing such scarcities or in the mentality underlying them. According to a recent report on the environment by the Pakistan Administrative Staff College, Pakistan is "a predatory and factional country. Economic policy and management . . . are often designed to serve the interests of the elite, who are engaged in obtaining advantages for themselves."⁹⁷

Resource Capture and Ecological Marginalization

Accompanying widespread supply-induced, demand-induced, and structural scarcities is growing evidence of resource capture and ecological marginalization in the agricultural and timber industries and in urban areas.

Resource Capture

The Green Revolution. The introduction of green revolution technologies in Pakistan contributed to resource capture. Launched in the early 1960s, the revolution was an attempt to increase agricultural production to meet the rising food demands of a growing population. In short, it was launched as part of an effort to address real and impending resource scarcities within the nation.

Application of these new technologies - which combined high-yield hybrid grains with greater use of fertilizers and irrigation - improved agricultural performance and increased grain output. However, the economically efficient use of these technologies demanded particularly large tracts of agricultural land. Consequently, the green revolution favored large, well connected landowners. Not only could they exploit the new technologies to maximum effect, but the revenues generated from their use enabled large landowners to take over additional land for cultivation. Farmers with smaller land holdings were eventually bought out, and many became landless. Those with medium-sized holdings (3 to 10 hectares) were hit especially hard.

Indeed, census data for 1960 to 1972 in Punjab Province (where green revolution technologies were most widely adopted) reveal that the new technologies resulted in a polarization of farm-size distribution: the percentage land area of large and small farms increased, while that of medium-sized farms declined (Tables 6 and 7).

Motivated by the potential profits of green revolution technologies, large landowners resumed self-cultivation of land previously rented out to both small- and medium-sized farmers. The latter suffered disproportionately because a higher percentage of them were tenant farmers. The result was a shift of farmers from the lower-medium- to the small-farm category over the inter-censual period. Polarization in farm size also contributed to landlessness among the poor peasantry. According to Akmal Hussain, census data reveal that 794,000 peasants - 43 percent of all agricultural laborers in Pakistan in 1973 - entered the category of wage laborers from 1961 to 1973.⁹⁸ Many of these peasants were evicted from their land during the process of change ushered in by the green revolution.

In short, concern over resource scarcities, the structure of Pakistan's agrarian economy, and new agricultural technologies combined to increase the incentives and opportunities for rural elites to appropriate, or capture, cropland, in the process increasing the number of small holder and landless peasants. Many were forced to move to other areas in search of employment, with small towns and cities receiving the largest share of the migration.

The Timber Mafia. The exploitation of Pakistan's forests exhibited a similar process. While deforestation has a long history, rates have been particularly high over the past decade, in large part because of rising demand for fuelwood. Land management and property rights legislation have failed to ensure adequate regulation of the forest industry.

In many cases, strong urban and rural groups have appropriated both community and government lands for themselves. According to a recent report published by the Pakistan Administrative Staff College in Lahore, a "timber mafia" - a term coined to describe persons and groups having a commercial interest in rapid forest exploitation -is now ravaging Pakistan's dwindling forests.⁹⁹

Those involved in the timber business have acquired leading roles in forest institutions and are deeply entrenched in the state's administrative machinery. These individuals, who are traditional tribal leaders and Sayyeds (direct descendants of Muhammad), have been able both to manipulate legislation to serve their interests and to block changes in the law that would make forest management more participatory and sustainable.¹⁰⁰

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, such individuals used large transfers of state development funds to open up forest areas for exploitation. Road and electrification programs facilitated commercial cutting while reinforcing the political and social control of tribal leaders over indigenous populations.¹⁰¹ Thereafter, the collusion of forest officials, large forestland owners, and contractors allowed timber extraction to proceed with little significant regulation.

The Chitral District in the NWFP is an example of such activity and its effects. The felling and smuggling of timber has been a constant source of irritation for the Kalush ethnic minority who reside there. Yet efforts to stop these practices have often been weak and unorganized and have at times prompted retaliation from timber interests. In one case, a Kalush leader survived an attempted murder, while his brother was killed after filing a court case about timber, grazing, and land rights in Rumbur Valley. Meanwhile, overharvesting of timber by colluding special interests continues in the Kalush valleys, causing migrations of villagers from high mountain pastures to valleys and of young people to cities in search of work.¹⁰² The districts of Malakand and Hazara have experienced similar problems.¹⁰³

Land Barons and the Tanker Mafia. Meanwhile, in large urban centers, such as Karachi, dramatically rising population and expanding commercial and industrial activity have resulted in a steady increase in the value of land. Technically, about four-fifths of all lands in Karachi are publicly owned.¹⁰⁴ However, deep-seated government corruption, along with bribery, has allowed entrepreneurs to appropriate these lands for profit.

This resource capture has not only led to widespread land speculation, but also to a thriving business founded on illegal squatter settlements. Settlement land is subdivided into plots and sold to low-income groups, usually for a moderate initial outlay. Yet interest rates for money borrowed for the initial purchase and for services are high. Moreover, given that such dwellings are illegal, constant bribes are required to prevent demolition by local authorities, and tenants face a similar threat for delinquency in payment to the landlord.¹⁰⁵

Corrupt civic agencies have allowed similar practices to govern the distribution of essential services. In Karachi, high demand for water along with rampant corruption and mismanagement in the Karachi Water Supply Board has created a "tanker mafia." Tankers obtain water from illegal hydrants or from poorer districts in the city and then sell it for profit.¹⁰⁶ The customers are often the inhabitants of the very districts from which the water was taken, and exorbitant prices force many to purchase the water on credit.¹⁰⁷ The results of such practices are increasing profit for entrepreneurs and local authorities and growing impoverishment of low-income urban dwellers.¹⁰⁸

Ecological Marginilization

Resource capture often prompts a flight of dispossessed inhabitants from affected areas in search of a better life. Receiving areas - whether rural or urban - are frequently ecologically vulnerable and are further degraded as incoming migrants place additional stress on existing resources.

According to the 1981 census, of the 5.92 million persons who had migrated within the country, 87.6 percent moved from rural to urban areas, while only 12.4 percent moved in the opposite direction. Over half permanently settled in cities.¹⁰⁹ The chief forces driving such migration have been identified as:

slow progress in the agricultural sector, a decline in per capita cropped area, low crop yields due to inefficient water management practices, failure to absorb skilled labour by modern technological systems, lack of alternate employment opportunities and environmental degradation due to deforestation and desertification.¹¹⁰

The large rural influx has, in turn, contributed to the overburdening of urban infrastructure and urban services. There has not only been a rapid decline in the quality and availability of basic urban resources and amenities such as housing, potable water, transportation, electricity, gas, drainage and sewerage, but also a mushrooming of katchi abadis (squatter settlements), often located on the most marginal land (Table 8).

Today, squatter settlements account for about 25 to 30 percent of Pakistan's overall urban population. In Karachi, they comprise an estimated at 41 percent and are growing by approximately 200,000 persons per year, twice as fast as the city's population.¹¹¹ In short, rural migration has contributed significantly to urban growth and to the marginalization of those within the urban environment.

The impact of migratory movements among rural areas is somewhat less clear. Available data do not permit definitive judgments about the degree to which rural ecological marginalization has occurred. Still, in the case of tenants left land-poor or landless as a result of the green revolution, data do support the conclusion that they have suffered a decline in real income and in the quality of their diets.¹¹² It is also clear that in addition to their migration into cities and towns, some supplemented their incomes by undertaking wage labor on neighboring farms.¹¹³ In short, data support the conclusion that resource capture prompted some decline in the living standards of affected rural groups.

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