The disastrous redesign of Pakistan’s rivers

As a hydrologist and water resource engineer, this really hits close to me.
Most of the time, we engineers understand the problem/s and can always produce holistic solutions to water resource management.
But unfortunately, we always hit the wall of politics, bureaucracy, corruption, and uninformed decision-makers.
I really wish we experts can really have the final say on matters of water resource management.
I wish everyone especially politicians can understand that water doesn't care about your politics, religion, or affiliation.
We must always remember that "we all live downstream".

If I understand this video correctly, the population explosion of Pakistan is directly related to the engineering of the Indus (makes sense, more agriculture = more food = more people). But that means you can't revert to "indigenous knowledge" as their engineering was designed for a much smaller population. The thing I took away from this video is that just like with the world as a whole, the country over-engineered its way to an unsustainable state, and cannot reverse it now.

The criticism of British colonialism are of course valid, but relying on 150 year old traditional knowledge and trying to turn back to a "natural" state of things is unlikely to yield satisfactory results.
Water-engineering drastically increased the amount of farmable land, that is now needed to feed Pakistan's vastly larger population. The struggle over grain exports from Ukraine and Russia have shown how dangerous an over reliance on food imports can be particularly for poorer countries.
With Pakistan's economy reliant on agriculture, there is also the risk of an economic crisis, that could have similarly severe impacts as some of these natural disasters.
Building a water management system with the modest means of a developing economy that equitably provides enough water to irrigate enough land to feed people in a world that is plagued by ever more extreme weather events, seems like a task with impossible constraints.
With no clear solution in sight, arguments against the proposed solution need to be more substantial than "it's unnatural and the British came up with it".

As a Pakistan citizen living in Lahore, this really is very concerning but our army, corrupt govt officers and politicians don't even care a bit about the future generations, they have created a negative economic and political environment on purpose so that there power remains intact, while the major issues like climate change, water scarcity and economic growth and development are getting neglected

The problem seems to be bad engineering rather than over-engineering. Good governance could fix past mistakes if there were the political will to keep selfish interest groups in check.

What a strange video! Super interesting on the history and hydrology part but so visibly wrong on the social commentary. From what I gather, the British started to build a canal system in the early 1900s and independent Pakistan continued similar projects to make a desert fertile. Then a hundred years later a number of unfortunate events at the same time culminate in a massive flood with 1,600 casualties. Tragic indeed. But the proposed alternative, which seems to be "dismantle the colonial canal system and go back to indigenous methods of managing water", basically means to go back to a state in which Pakistan is able to sustain maybe 10 or 20 millions of people tops - not the 230 million it has today. So instead of 1600 casualties over 100 years, you'll have more than 200 million casualties and constant hunger (because an average woman in Pakistan has a few children).

but wouldn't rolling back the "modern" irrigation systems mean also going back to subsistence farming + fewer people being able to be sustained by pakistans acres?

This videos appears to be conflating two separate issues, inequality of water access and engineering water pathways to capture more water. While the two have been historically linked, they don't have to be. You could still engineer the water pathways, and be more equitable with water distribution and access. The problem is that it appears that the engineering is necessary to support Pakistan's population. They can't just go back letting the rivers flow wherever nature takes them.
Also while damming up the rivers has reduced flow and allowed salt water to destroy previously farmable land, that has to be put into the context of how much more land was created that could support agriculture. My guess is that the latter is a lot more than the former. Again, there is the inequality issue of who gets the new land and who gets their land destroyed, but that's a separate issue that can be remedied while keeping the engineering.

What does not seem to be clear is that if this "colonial" irrigation system was to be dismantled, would it not have severe repercussions of its own? I think this it is too simplistic to say it's the fault of colonial mindset or colonial practice or over-engineering. The solution probably lies somewhere between sustainable engineering solutions, enforcing flood management related plans and in my humble opinion most importantly arresting the mind-boggling growth of population in Pakistan.

If VOX thinks the traditional water management solutions are so awesome they should also provide some analysis on how this would affect total agricultural output. I'd guess it would lower, otherwise the british wouldn't have bothered with the canals. But it's easy to advertise traditionalist agricultural practices if you are not the one having to live with the results.

The video implies that the solution to Pakistan's water problems is to revert to pre-industrial agricultural and water control methods. This is all well and good if you're willing to accept a pre-industrial standard of living and population (as the video notes, pre-industrial pakistan's population was a 5th what it is today).
Switching to subsistence farming is not the only solution, They could instead invest in better and less corrupt water engineering. Most countries around the world have professional civil and hydro engineers who spend great effort to manage the water systems to prevent flooding and provide further irrigation, and in the vast majority of cases they are successful. The solution for Pakistan is to better manage their water resources and establish an apolitical body to maintain them. This has been the job of governments for millennia. I believe the scale of the damage Pakistan's floods have caused will provide sufficient political will to establish proper, professional, apolitical and holistic management of the country's rivers.

I'm Pakistani and I'm telling you, The canals and Dams aren't the issues, the issue is mismanagement and actually not modernizing this almost century-old irrigation system!!

framing this as a "colonialist mindset" problem is the absolute worst take possible

It's sad to see the once so-called "largest canal irrigation system" go down the drain all due to lack of long term planning by the government.

The water crisis is definitely a critical topic. Our crew analysed the current situation at the River Nile. Egyptian farmers along the River Nile banks have long relied on this legendary water source for their way of life. But now the river is drying up, turning the traditional way of life into a struggle. While more efficient irrigation and planting systems might be one solution, wider geopolitical issues are also affecting livelihoods all along the river. We're hoping to see positive solutions to the problematic water conflicts we're seeing nowadays.

Yeah, it's a completely Western idea to artificially redirect water. That's why the first known instances of irrigation took place in Iran, India and Mesopotamia.

Waterways can be useful. But climate change made us to adapt rivers to that condition. Jakarta, while it's mostly caused by human-induced water extraction, rather than climate change, is another great example. It always floods partly due to rivers being above the sinking land. Jakarta now has adapted lots of canals since then. And yes, it's mostly caused by Dutch mistakes, and unsustainable, both climate and land stability, development

The first 6 minutes were focussed on colonialists deteriorating the land for money/power and the fact that an independent Pakistan significantly ramped up the canal system over 30-40 years was glossed over in 20 seconds

In 2012, like many years, there were also massive floods. We were driving through the area. The roads are embankments, they are the high point. So lots of poor people who lost everything were just sitting there on the roads. It was heart-wrenching to see. As far as you could look there was water.

Framing this as a problem of colonialism, that can only be solved with local/indigenous answers is a bit...odd. Engineering and science are absolutely what is needed. Evidence-based solutions.

As a Pakistani, who understands this issue and the politics involved, I find this documentary mostly wrong. Don't have time to correct all the info but for a start, the key reason for building Dams and Barrages is that Indus river gets its water from Glacier ice melting. This happens in late spring, summer and early autumn, so Dams and barrages help store massive amount of fresh water that is needed for agriculture and people, throughout the year. If it weren't for the dams/barrages then Indus river would be dry during periods of no glacier ice melting (i.e. many months)

I’m Pakistani and when it comes to this the main issue is corruption, mismanagement, discrimination and a load of other issues blaming the British isn’t the solution. Yeah the British are responsible for several issues Pakistan faces like the Kashmir dispute and modern day western intervention in Pakistan like the US meddling in Pakistani affairs is a issue. The old irrigation systems won’t be able to feed Pakistans 220 million people. With better management this issue can become a lesser risk. Many areas face issue with water like the western US just recently in California lots of storms caused flooding in a usually dry area but due to better management the impact wasn’t as bad as the floods in Pakistan.

Thank you for explaining why the monsoon floods in Pakistan have been so much worse than the monsoon floods in India since 2005 or so. I was wondering if it was because Pakistan was just getting far more torrential rains during the monsoons. But if that were the case, India would be equally affected. But almost never hear of India suffering these floods (though Bangladesh does, every year, because it's in the Ganges River delta). When you mess around with the flows nature has set out, you will get disaster more often than not.

These engineering project certainly helped the communities grow... there was certainly greater benefit in them. These projects certainly come with risk involved, we see the effect today. What seems to be overlooked was the constant monitoring of these rivers, to see if they may cause problems ahead, and could be rectified easily.

Recently Indian govt has sent letter to Islamabad to talk about the Indus water treaty 1960.
A lot of major development will be seen on this topic.

Important history our policy makers and infrastructure managers should pay attention to. Rivers are also built to grow vegetation. In our world we focus our attention on flood control when we should be focused on high flow diversion for agricultural and bioremediation uses. Spot on Vox! Thank you for speaking truth and for putting a spotlight on these scholars.

The issue is not only the canal system but how much water goes to waste using this system. Process is known to be incredibly inefficient and due to that, almost 80% of all farming in Pakistan is done by ground water instead of the rivers. At independence (1947), ground water use for farming was less than 10%. This has put an enormous pressure on ground water supplies in the country.

It is important to note that there were no flooding issues during British rule with the fist major floods being in 1950, today's issue comes from Pakistan's mismanagement and poorly thought through expansion of the system.

Monsoons are the support system of Pakistan's agriculture. And monsoon is not just a rainy, stormy weekend, it stays for a while and it ultimately fills our water reservoirs. As far as its catastrophic effects are concerned, it is nothing as compared to large scale droughts and famine if such irrigation system had not been developed. Such intense monsoon rains occur in a decade but this irrigation system feeds the country throughout the year.

First of all, Thank You the team which created this video. Really we are indebted to you. Here in Pakistan institutions and responsible authorities and people don't pay attention to real problems. I'm glad that your channel highlighted this issue.
Secondly, Kindly make a video about possible solutions. Pakistan's population is growing exponentially. Really it's a mess. The rivers are our lifeline. Dams create cheap electricity. By the way currently the rate of electric current is too expensive for middle class. Thus there is greater focus on building new dams so cheap electricity can be produced. Water scarcity is scary. I'm sad to inform that authorities are not paying attention.

Bangladesh has worst case river related scenario than Pakistan. But Bangladesh took the matter in it's own hand and started fixing it's problem one by one instead of blaming British for something which happened 70 to 150 years ago.
For how long Pakistan going to blame their colonial past?

Can we appreciate how beautiful the stop motion throughout this video is? 👏👏

I can't thank you enough for covering this critical topic in detail. There is so much complexity in this water system and elites are controlling the majority of these irrigated lands and blocking every possible solution being proposed by the critics. Greetings from Pakistan

A city nearby seaside had river flowing like five fingers to sea.
City had the main stream.
Still city faced water shortage.
Streams on either side away from city with water flowing to sea, were engineered to get all the water to city.
Every thing was okay till a heavy down pour and city faced flood.

if only Pakistani authorities were smart enough themselves and really cared about the public the floods would not have been so disastrous

Please take a minute to appreciate the visuals of how the water flow has been explained. I mean just wow! Vox pushes the bar higher every time for other content creators.

A fairly bizarre take. The lack of gratitude toward the hard working souls that created these systems is Jarring. Hopefully this type of story telling has an expiry date, and we can get back to appreciating progress for the blessing that it actually is.

A similar story is playing out where I live. Wetlands "reclaimed" for farming. Extremely severe drought and little tolerance for rainfall

2:05 so glad someone has highlighted this with actual 3D topographical representations, was on my list of projects but Kudos to the vox team who have done an excellent job 🏆

Given so much water scarcity and that seeing a lot of videos on how much effect the dams cause to downriver flows. I don't think building more dams are going to make it better, it just slows the river flow down even more along the Indus River (and if that was meant for agriculture or electricity generation, then that's going to make it worse in the next flooding season)

Though Indus is in Pakistan..But it's very pious for us Indians and the mother river has blessed our civilization..Our culture, our heritage Indus❤️🙏

I don't think it's that easy for Pakistan to make the suggested changes since agriculture provides employment to around half the population and so, reverting the policies would mean spending more money [which Pakistan clearly does not have] and reducing the spread of "fertile" land which would again affect their monetary conditions. Hence, it is concluded that Pakistan has, in my opinion, no way out

I am also indian and ya the British did bad thing it's about time people and politicians stop use them as an excuse of their incompitance and also this is not colonial mindset but industrial mindset and the first industrial countries just happened to be the colonial countries.. ...... 🧐😒😒

Thanks for highlighting why some of the flooding happened in Pakistan. All I heard was historic rain, not poor water management

The canal building transformed the demographics and politics of this region. West Pakistan and now Pakistan may not even exist without these canals. The dominance of the feudal land owners and army elite who enjoyed British patronage made sure that democracy does not take a deep roots here. Indus river basin went from supporting a thin population to over 230Mil today. And now the cumulative ecological, economic and political consequences are showing. Thanks for an excellent explanation.

Thank you for raising awareness of this issue! Great video

Thanks for spending the time to create and share this content awareness 🙏🏾

vox: let talk about the issue
me: oh okay let hear it
vox: it all change when the British attacked
me: oh god not again...

The precarious and unfortunate situation of Pakistan reminds of Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' which had a similar theme of man trying to master nature and getting punished for it with his life, these lines rang in my ears as i looked at the flood imagery -
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

Brillaint! Thanks for working on out country’s miserable things

I absolutely enjoyed the model and its animation. Well done!

I'm really grateful for channels like Vox that introduce me to history and issues in the world that I otherwise wouldn't know about just because it's not something being taught or talked about in central Europe. I think schools all over the world should stop only focusing on themselves and look around sometimes. Maybe it would make humanity repeat its mistakes a little less often.

Great explanation and absolutely fantastic visuals with the water in the river and its flows! Allows us to fully understand why this thing have actually happened and how we can deal with all the stuff regarding the overflooding potentially!

As one wise man said, "Pakistan is not a poor country, it's a highly mismanaged country.."

Wonderful video as always! really love the effort that goes into this!!

As a Pakistani it's very sad to see once called "largest canal irrigation system" go down the drain due to lack of long term planning by the governments and the corrupt rulers, martial laws are the most important for this downfall.

I love how the thesis for this video is Pakistans water policies are a continuation of colonialism and the experts you interview on this reside in the uk

That was really unexpected. I didn't know that the canal system in our country is causing this much damage to our agriculture and infrastructure sector in every major flood specifically the 2010 and 2022 floods in Pakistan. I hope the government officials of Pakistan will take the aspects of this video into account and take necessary action.
Kudos to the VOX research team for looking into this matter. Maybe you guys can do another video on Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan as well.

Does the water standing for months on end, not recharge ground water in water scarce lands!?
P. S i know flood management is important but would this flood situation benefit the water scarce places in any way?

i love vox video on Indus River System but the issue is how to we feed 220+million people with sustainable agriculture. You talk out issue of over engineering ..... yes but what is alternative ? year round water supply produce enough food to meet the demand ...... crops who are in season means growing in the fields have to be imported and you known the market (international) ........ if we remove water infrastructure now among any section of rivers we will face flood and famine in that section......ONE THING YOU missed that was climate change...... sudden heavy rain on small patch of land can cause flood......beacuse of climate crisis Government went for more Dams now if upstream gets flooded whole country gets flooded onther mistake in your coverage was flood started at swat and tausa barrage (not sukkar barrage) ........Anyways Good luck and keep up the good work

The mission point here is that if you are going to un-over engineer the river first you must find something else for 100,000,000 people lto do for a living and find food for them on the international market.

good presentation with information about issues on ground, i was not aware of these nice but despite issues with current system, the solution did made a lot of land agricultural. now comes the politics, corruptions, manipulations. so engineers build a solution that can be improved over time

Without talking about Indus water treaty this video is incomplete

Y'all continue to amaze with these physical diagrams and illustrations. They are spectacular!

First of all Pakistan doesn’t win independence…india won it…2nd due to British policy of divide and rule india was divided into 3 parts😞

What about irrigation? and taking everyone along with you? As if it is something that is possible in a big country. Yes human engineering has caused floods and calamities sometimes, but it also enabled more people to live on this planet.

It would have taken more time for the Vox team to make a 3D model of Indus River than those policy makers in Pakistan making future plans for tackling the expected water scarcity.

This is based on the Indus and Pakistan but this is such a global issue. We are over engineering rivers and water management in every continent and it’s contributing to our flood magnitude

Problem was defined nicely
But solutions were left go listeners imagination!
I suggest:
Better and judicious use of irrigation for farming- using drip irrigations instead of flood irrigation
Use of less to no pesticides
Use vegetation to clean water before discharging sewage water for better healthy rivers
Changing part of land from annual to perennial farming and agro forestry to grow fruits not for exporting but local consumption to develop food security
Having at least 100 meters of forest belt on either sides of waterway with indeginous food forest to improve and prevent floods
Making laws not to do construction both industrial and domestic building right over river banks
Make use of overflow perennial canal system feeding water reservoirs to use for irrigation in dry season, etc
Water recharge wells, etc
Reduce hard surfaces to avoid flash flooding, etc
I am not geologist but why can’t academicians from universities were able to give solutions or was this not the point or intent of this video.
Everyone can count and point problems! But can they give do-able low cost solutikns!

So… over all the effect was positive. Boosted the population many times over. Inequality in water management isn’t good, but still, they benefited from it.

Heartbreaking, it was not a natural disaster but a man made missmanaged measures that turned the blessing into disguise. :(

Very informative but the opinions of the professors highlighted in this are very ignorant. The conditions of the modern world make it literally impossible to "just listen to indigenous knowledge instead of fixing the problem with modern engineering". Did they miss the part where agriculture employs 50% of the country? Or maybe the part about how the population of Pakistan has boomed exponentially since these changes were made, and this increase in agriculture is helping prevent starvation? If anything the recent global pandemic has shown how fragile international food supply lines can be and how nations should be encouraging domestic food production, not looking for ways to reduce it.

Maybe the old ways were better, definitely more sustainable, however, you can't turn back time.
There are now 230 million people living in Pakistan. Going back to agropastoral farming can't sustain that population. I don't have a solution and I assume the people advocating for "indigenous knowledge systems" are aware of this. Pakistan is in need of a robust long-term water management plan, but I'm really afraid ideologies and politics are going to get in the way of a sensible solution.

I think the important thing to remember is the population grew so much because as a result of available food less people were dying young, usually as children.

Thankful for this . i would love to see you guys

If VOX really wanted to understand the issues, they would have interviewed a Hydrologist. You wouldn't do a story about heart attacks without interviewing a cardiologist right?

Fantastic work. Kudos to the production team.

This is also happening in India....i have Pandu river basin in Kanpur redeveloped , it's exit being narrowed at Maharajpur that caused flooding in past

A great video and explanation. I saw the footage in the news when they had the massive floods, but had no idea of the underlying cause and history.

The climate of Indus river basin resembles a lot like river Nile

One of the best yet short and concise coverage on this topic. I left with more than when I entered. Thanks!

Engineering practices in the past did not take into account environmental considerations as much compared to modern engineering practices.

Well planned and researched video, keep up the good work

At what point does Pakistan get blamed for its own problems and not the British. Pakistan has had independence for quite a while now and you're making this video telling me that it's Britain's fault that Pakistan can't control it's irrigation? How about they take responsibility and stop blaming others for their problems

Moreover, the Indus River civilisations were famous for their huge reservoirs and much was made in this video of them 'going with the flow' but they just did not do that.

The representation of water is amazing

It's really good video explaining the reason but I think they could have avoid the current situation by mentioning then properly.

Very informative video, thank you Vox for covering this issue.

How did the indus valley civilization turn into one of the most remarkable communities of all time? (basically a little history and evolution to today's Indian subcontinent)

It's the fault of government of pakistan. British did what any other colonial power would have done. It's the government of pakistan who still gives land to powerful govt servants by giving them prime land like patronage. What colonial power gave away was about 1/3rd of total hence most of is given by the Pakistani government

Every thing has its pros and cons. Solve as many as you can. There is a population that has to be considered. My grandpa was a clivil engineer with a Cornell degree. Worked on New York City water systems. Most educated people don’t have enough hands on experience. It’s looked good on paper

Love this video! Would like to see more videos about the situation of rivers in India and whether this kind of canal system problem is also there in India.

All river banks from upstream to downstream must be cleared of construction and bothsides of river banks with trees and shrubs suitable for river banks and survive standing water. All low lying land must be properly survey for soil thickness specially clay loam and deep biopores created for flood waters to seep deep in the ground.

I'm sorry, you can't say that this colonial mindset created this water system and increased the population fivefold is bad because the resulting population increase is overburdening the ecosystem.

This situation is going to get dire as Indian government has issued notice over Indus Water Treaty threatening Pakistan's access to water

I mean if the population of a country grows fivefold and the water supply remains the same it makes sense that the water availability per capita will drop proportionately, it is simple math.

Loved the stop motion animation in this. ❤️

I wish Pakistani Media could talk about it like that..Kudos to you for making this video.

what a great content. I had to rewatch it 3 times to really understand...

*Thanks Vox! another informative and interesting video*