Ali et al. (2025) Cascading Risks and Adaptive Deficits: A Review of Climate Change Impacts on Pakistan’s Water Security

Identification

• Journal: European Journal of Theoretical and Applied Sciences
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-10-13
• Authors: Muhammad Arif Ali, Muhammad Hannan, Waqar Ahmed
• DOI: 10.59324/ejtas.2025.3(6).01

Research Groups

• School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
• College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
• State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Environment and Resources, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
• University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Short Summary

This review synthesizes climate vulnerability and cascading risks to Pakistan’s water security (2003-2023), revealing that climate change acts as a risk multiplier, intensifying physical changes and exacerbating institutional weaknesses. It proposes an integrated, systems-based research agenda to transition from reactive disaster response to proactive, evidence-based adaptation planning.

Objective

• To critically identify failure pathways in Pakistan’s water management system due to climate change and institutional weaknesses, based on observations from 2003 to 2023.
• To propose a targeted, integrated, and systems-based research agenda, particularly Hydro-Agro-Economic modeling, to address key knowledge gaps and facilitate a shift towards proactive adaptation planning.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Pakistan, with a focus on the Indus River Basin (IRB), Upper Indus Basin (UIB), Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) region (e.g., Chitral), and specific districts in Punjab (e.g., Faisalabad, Bahawalnagar, Rahim Yar Khan).
• Temporal Scale: 2003 to 2023, with some data points extending beyond this period (e.g., glacier loss from 1992, heavy precipitation trends since the 1950s).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: This is a review paper synthesizing findings from various studies. It discusses and proposes future use of:
  • Hydrological and cryospheric-hydrological models (e.g., for runoff projections, glacier melt).
  • Reservoir-scale models (e.g., for monthly inflows).
  • Integrated Hydro-Agro-Economic models, coupled groundwater-agriculture-energy systems, and non-stationary hydrological modeling frameworks for future research.
• Data sources:
  • Satellite studies (e.g., for glacier area loss, land surface temperature, groundwater storage).
  • Long-term gauge analyses (for streamflow, high and low flow indices).
  • National assessments (e.g., Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) 2022).
  • Global climate risk indices.
  • Regional basin summaries and transboundary basin profiles.
  • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports (AR6).
  • World Weather Attribution (WWA) reports.
  • Extensive literature review of scientific articles, policy documents (National Water Policy 2018, National Climate Change Policy 2012), and reports.

Main Results

• Climate change acts as a risk multiplier in Pakistan, intensifying cryospheric retreat, streamflow variability, groundwater depletion, and the flood-drought cycle.
• Observed glacier loss in the Eastern Hindu Kush (Chitral) was 31% (816 km²) between 1992 and 2022, with an average annual loss of 27 km²/year, accelerating after 2007. Maximum Land Surface Temperature (LST) in the Hindu Kush increased by 7.3 °C during the same period.
• A significant divergence exists between observed streamflow declines in the Upper Indus Basin (e.g., 55% decrease in 7-day low flows at Khairabad) and some future climate model projections indicating increased runoff, complicating water resource planning.
• Groundwater depletion is primarily driven by unsustainable human extraction (e.g., for agriculture and urban use) rather than solely by climate-driven recharge deficits, evidenced by a non-significant correlation between groundwater levels and rainfall/temperature in Faisalabad District.
• Systemic vulnerability is evident in declining efficiency across the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus in nearly half of monitored districts in Punjab, exacerbated by non-climatic factors like rapid urbanization and industrial growth.
• Adaptive capacity is deficient due to persistent policy implementation failures (e.g., failure to enforce flood protection laws post-2010 floods) and the obsolescence of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) under non-stationary hydrological conditions.
• The catastrophic 2022 floods, linked to increased rainfall intensity, resulted in approximately 1,598 fatalities, affected 33 million people, and caused estimated economic losses of US$30 billion (over 10% of national GDP).

Contributions

• Provides a critical synthesis of climate vulnerability and cascading risks to Pakistan's water security, specifically identifying "failure pathways" in water management from 2003 to 2023.
• Highlights the convergence of physical climate impacts (cryospheric retreat, streamflow variability, flood-drought whiplash, groundwater depletion) with institutional weaknesses and adaptive deficits.
• Proposes an integrated, systems-based research agenda centered on Hydro-Agro-Economic modeling that dynamically links hydrology, socioeconomic drivers, and governance, aiming to shift from reactive disaster response to proactive, evidence-based adaptation planning.
• Identifies key research gaps, including the need for refined regional attribution and non-stationarity analysis, and quantifying the economic cost of adaptive deficits ("Non-Resilience Penalty").
• Offers policy recommendations for climate-resilient water security, focusing on institutional reform, IWT modernization, infrastructural resilience, and sustainable urban planning.

Funding

Not explicitly stated in the provided paper.

Citation

@article{Ali2025Cascading,
  author = {Ali, Muhammad Arif and Hannan, Muhammad and Ahmed, Waqar},
  title = {Cascading Risks and Adaptive Deficits: A Review of Climate Change Impacts on Pakistan’s Water Security},
  journal = {European Journal of Theoretical and Applied Sciences},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.59324/ejtas.2025.3(6).01},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.59324/ejtas.2025.3(6).01}
}