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The court explained the need in uploads to its website related to Petition 57 of 2016:
a) Pakistan f aces an issue of water scarcity, and b)it sees water reservoirs as
essential to the survival of Pakistan`s people and economy.
The Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources corroborates the former claim.
The argument for reservoirs rests on the premise that insufficient storage capacity
causes water shortages. These assumptions merit scrutiny.
Is it necessary to target water storage capacity when water can be used more
efficiently? Agriculture accounts for more than 95 per cent of Pakistan`s water
consumption, and it is being used suboptimally.
If optimising water use is insufficient on its own to solve Pakistan`s looming water
crisis and additional storage is needed, would construction of the Diamer-Basha and
Mohmand dams be the best way of addressing that need? What would be the shortf
all if existing dams were desilted, maintained and rehabilitated? What would be the
shortfall of capacity needed if instead of mega dams, smaller dams, with their
smaller risks and costs, were built? Savvy impact investors would need these
questions answered in a publicly available feasibility study.
As a remedy to the social costs, nine model villages with amenities were envisioned
for the displaced, and selected rock carvings would be moved to a museum in Chilas.
If the Diamer-Basha dam were the miracle that it would have to be to justif y all the
risks and costs, why would CPEC or development banks not finance it? Could it be
that they read the feasibility studies? Mega projects are inherently political,
according to Andrew Edkins, UCL professor of the management of complex projects.
Harvard international development professor Lant Pritchett predicts that policy
advocates withhold information about a project`s effectiveness when they believe
this information would deter support; they instead use emotive rhetoric to hoodwink
prospective supporters.
One cannot doubt the sincerity of the new government or the judiciary. One does
wonder, however, at the politics of the policy advocates. Pakistanis should demand
answers to hard questions before they part with their money.