As military tensions continue to flare up between India and Pakistan, India\u2019s Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed earlier this week to stop water from crossing the border into Pakistan, saying “India’s water will be used for India’s interests.”<\/p>\n
On April 23, Modi suspended a 1960 treaty that allows the two countries to share water from the Indus Basin. Building infrastructure to stop the flow of water into Pakistan, however, would take India years to carry out, and the move would further strain the resources of a water-scarce country. <\/p>\n
Pakistan\u2019s water resources have already been burdened by climate change, as the country faces rising temperatures, droughts, and melting glaciers and superfloods that are impacting the timing of water flow. Now, India\u2019s moves could exacerbate the crisis\u2014and present long-term challenges for Pakistan\u2019s agricultural sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many Pakistanis currently lack access to clean and reliable water sources\u2014in part due to climate change. In the months after the 2022 floods killed at least 1,700 people, more than 10 million people were left without access to safe drinking water, according to a UNICEF report<\/a>. \u201cThere’s been quite a lot of difficulty for local populations to have access to water on a consistent basis,\u201d says Bhargabi Bharadwaj, research associate at the Environment and Society Center at Chatham House. \u201cThis is already being felt at local population level, even scrapping this most recent escalation on the Indus Water Treaty agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n Why does India control Pakistan\u2019s water supply?<\/strong><\/p>\n When the South Asian subcontinent was cleaved by the British in 1947, boundaries were drawn that divided the Indus River along India and Pakistan. \u201cThe problem starts on day one,\u201d says Hassaan Khan, assistant professor of urban and environmental policy at Tufts University.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong> How India Is Threatening to Weaponize Water in Its Conflict With Pakistan<\/a><\/p>\n Much of the headwaters are located in India, despite most irrigation systems falling in Pakistan. \u201cAround 80% of Pakistan’s agriculture and the third of its hydropower depends on the water from the Indus Basin region,\u201d says Bharadwaj. \u201cThere is a greater dependency on this basin for Pakistan than there is for India.\u201d<\/p>\n The Indus Waters Treaty was drawn up in 1960 by the World Bank, and required the two countries to divide the river system\u2019s water equally. The treaty included mechanisms to resolve disputes\u2014and was designed to last in perpetuity.\u00a0<\/p>\n For India to cut Pakistan\u2019s water supply altogether would be an impossible task. \u201cCurrently, India does not have the infrastructure capacity to really store excess water, which is what they’d be required to do if they’re kind of trying to cut away from letting this water reach Pakistan,\u201d says Bharadwaj.<\/p>\n But still, experts say India could engineer small disruptions that would impact how much water flows into Pakistan. \u201cStopping the flow isn\u2019t really possible,\u201d says Khan. \u201cWhat [India can do] is impact the timing of the flow\u2014release more water one day and then stop. [It can] create these small disturbances, which, if they’re not properly managed by Pakistan, can have an impact on the agricultural system.\u201d<\/p>\n The impact would likely largely be felt during the low flow season\u2014from December to February\u2014when there\u2019s less water to begin with. <\/p>\n But Bharadwaj notes that the Indus Water Treaty was designed to withstand the many tussles the two countries have had over the years. \u201cThis isn\u2019t the first time this has happened,\u201d she says. \u201cOne of the very positive things about the Indus Water Treaty is that it has withstood two previous wars and another limited conflict between the two countries, and that can be, I think, largely attributed to the strength of its design.\u201d <\/p>\n Why does Pakistan have a water crisis?<\/strong><\/p>\n Pakistan\u2019s water scarcity crisis can be traced back to before the country was founded. \u201cThe regions that now make up most of Pakistan as part of the Indus Basin, they’re alluvial plains, so they’re very fertile, but typically don’t have that much rainfall,\u201d says Daniel Haines, associate professor in the history of risk and disaster at University College London whose research focuses on South Asia. “The ambition to increase the acreage of farmland outstripped the amount of water that was available.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As early as the 1930s and \u201840s, different regions of then colonial India were already disputing who would get what amount of water for agricultural projects, says Haines.\u00a0<\/p>\n Climate change and rapid population growth is now making things worse. Today, Pakistan is considered one of the most water-stressed countries in the world. And last winter was one of the driest in the country\u2019s history, with the Pakistan Meteorological Department reporting 67% less rainfall<\/a> than usual. According to the Germanwatch 2025 Climate Risk Index<\/a>, Pakistan ranked as the most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change in 2022, as it faced one of the costliest disasters in world history caused by the flooding\u2014putting much of the country\u2019s agricultural land at risk and impacting drinking water. But farmlands are also becoming unusable due to increasing droughts, pushing more people into cities and placing a strain on urban water supplies. <\/p>\n \u201cCities now are increasingly water stressed, because water supply hasn’t kept up with the increase in population,\u201d says Khan.\u00a0<\/p>\n