Climate-Smart Water Management Technologies in Pakistan

Pakistan is among the most vulnerable countries due to climate change and variability. The most important impact of climate change is on the ecosystem, particularly on water resulting into frequent droughts and floods, which have devastating impacts on infrastructure, agriculture, livestock, and humans. Currently, urban flooding has become a common phenomenon. Moreover, climate change has a great impact on crops, on sowing and harvesting time, in addition to an increase in crop water requirements. This has not only varying impacts on the upper, middle, and lower riparian but also has a greater impact on drylands as compared to irrigated areas. Climate change has now become a reality. This chapter analyzes the impacts of climate change on the ecosystem particularly on the water, the underlying reasons and proposes simple and smart water management techniques to cope with the climate change for the upper Indus Basin, the plain irrigated area, the lower Indus Basin, and the rainfed areas. The main purpose of this chapter is to present the potential of already tested climate-smart water management technologies for adaptation at larger scale.