NATIONAL WATER POLICY OF PAKISTAN: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

This study contributes to identify the critical aspects of a water policy and implementation challenges from the perspective of a water stressed country. To face the challenge of water security, Pakistan has established its first policy in the form of National Water Policy of Pakistan (NWPP) in 2018. Presumably, the much-anticipated policy is resulted in highly participatory and productive process with the relevant stakeholders. Yet, it encourages further evaluations and analyses to ensure feasibility of implementation and to identify gaps and due priorities in the policy. This study is conducted to analyze the NWPP so as to identify any gap or loophole in the policy. For the analysis we use existing criteria of Chenung, Mirzaei & Leeder (2010). The important components of this criterion are: accessibility, policy background, goals, resources, monitoring and evaluation, public opportunities, and obligations. The evaluation found that the policy provides an integrated ways to deal with the challenges of water security in Pakistan. However, it lacks a coherent framework and to come up with effective implementation mechanism to address the issue especially related to institutional governance structures. It proposes some targets that are having inconsistencies in the NWPP document in defining obligations of federal and provincial governments. The findings of the study reveal that the implementation of the policy remains a major challenge majorly due to weak institutional capability and institutional confusions between the federal and provincial governments. The way forward of this study identifies research needs and significant hurdles to policy implementation.

Keywords: Analysis, Institutions, Water Crises, Water Policy, Pakistan