Water Resources Development, Vol. 16, No.

3, 391406, 2000

Water Management in the Indus Basin of Pakistan: A Half-century Perspective

JAMES L. WESCOAT JR1, SARAH J. HALVORSON2 & DAANISH MUSTAFA1

1 2

Department of Geography, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA; Department of Geography, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA. Email: wescoat@spot.colorado.edu

ABSTRACT This paper surveys the past half-century of water management experiments and experience in the Indus River basin in Pakistan as a way to identify principles for long-term water planning. The survey focuses on three variables: (1) spatial scales of water management; (2) geographic regions of water management; and (3) substantive water problems. These variables help assess changes during the post-colonial transition (194760); Indus basin development (196075); and management and environmental movements (19752000). Taken together, these periods point toward a model of Articulated Adaptive Management, which stresses planning for economic, political and environmental crises; dynamic changes in governance; multiple scales of water management; regional diversity and innovation; and broader scienti c experimentation and monitoring of water management alternatives. Introduction and Approach The Indus River basin in Pakistan has served as one of the worlds premier water laboratories in the twentieth century (Figure 1). Although the record of water development extends back six millennia through the Harappan period, the most dramatic changes have occurred during the past fty years (Meadows & Meadows, 1999). Forty million irrigated acres have come under coordinated management, consuming 100 million acre-feet of water annually, or approximately 70% of annual basin runoff (WAPDA, 1990). New water management institutions have developed, from the community to international basin scales. At the same time, water for riverine, deltaic and coastal environments is diminishing and polluted (Government of Pakistan, 1996; Akhtar et al., 1997). Urban and peri-urban populations suffer frequent water shortages. Waterlogging, salinity, groundwater depletion and irrigation inef ciency continue to threaten agricultural production. Inequities range from the tail-ends of canals to inter-provincial water allocation disputes. The Pakistan Country Report: Vision for Water for the 21st Century (Pakistan Water Partnership, 1999) lists a daunting array of governance, institutional, technical, environmental, economic and nancial issues to be addressed in the next century. But in the massive literature on Indus basin water resources, there has been no broad appraisal of the past half-century of experience, and what it implies for any future vision of water management. Historians have focused on
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Figure 1. Indus River basin in Pakistan. colonial irrigation (e.g. Ali, 1988; India, 1992; Gilmartin, 1994) while planners have concentrated on the past decade or two (e.g. WAPDA, 1990). This paper suggests that a half-century perspective has special value. First, it represents a useful planning time scalelong enough to appraise the effects of complex river basin development, yet short enough to retain salience for planners and engineers engaged in long-term development programmes. Fifty years also corresponds with the average human life expectancy in Pakistan during the past half-century (ul Haq & ul Haq, 1998). It corresponds with aquatic ecosystem processes, including the population dynamics of long-lived species such as the Indus dolphin (Platanista minor). Finally, a half-century perspective includes and must account formajor discontinuities, crises and geographic contrasts that occur in complex river basins (cf. Wescoat, 1999). This paper develops and presents a 50-year perspective on Indus basin management. It is based on a broader literature review prepared for the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (Wescoat et al., 1996). After introducing the research approach and methods, we review trends over three historical periods: (1) the post-colonial transition (194760); (2) the Indus basin development programme (196075); and (3) the management era (19752000). In each period, three variables are used to describe major patterns and lessons (Figure 2): X axis: spatial scales (e.g. household, farm, community, municipality, canal command, province, nation, international basin, world-system);

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Figure 2. Conceptual framework for 50-year review. Y axis: geographic regions (e.g. Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, Northwest Frontier Provinces, Northern Areas); Z axis: water problems (e.g. economic development, governance, environmental protection). By examining how these geographic scales, regions and problems of water management have changed over time, we develop an outline for future water management in the Indus basin that may have relevance for other complex water systems.

Post-colonial Transition and Consolidation: 194760 By 14 August 1947independence day for Pakistan and Indiasummer crops of maize and cotton had been sown, and drainage and weeding were under way. The monsoon provided crucial water supplies. Managing water, crops and heat are ordinarily dif cult at this time of year, but they were nightmarish in the early months of independence. Violence disrupted cultivation and destroyed local irrigation channels and wells. Waterborne disease outbreaks occurred in metropolitan areas that swelled with millions of refugees. Although one early proposal for a uni ed India had suggested regional river basin boundaries (see Schwartzberg, 1990, plate VIII.C.4.k), it received little support, indicating the limited importance of water in international boundarymaking (Spate, 1948). The new boundary cut across canal commands in Ferozpur, Lahore and Gurdaspur districts of Punjab. Headworks on the Ravi and Sutlej rivers lay in India while the greater part of their command areas lay in Pakistan. An Inter-Dominion agreement kept water owing in main channels until 1 April 1948 when it was cut off, precipitating complaints by Pakistan in the UN Security Council. These events sparked studies of water distribution problems in the two Punjabs (Gorrie, 1948; Fowler, 1950). Headwaters of the Jhelum River lay in the politically disputed region of Kashmir where water issues were eclipsed by territorial issues. The political geography of Kashmir

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received attention from scholars (Spate, 1948), but they gave little attention to related water problems. Some scholars recognized the integrative effects of partition on water resources governance in Pakistan. Michel (1967) documented the transition from provincial irrigation departments to national water planning and development. Antecedent controversies between the former colonial provinces of Punjab and Sindh (the upstream and downstream states of the Indus basin of Pakistan) were temporarily set aside in the new national interest (Afzal, 1995; cf. Government of Sind, 1944; Government of India, 1946; Gulhati, 1973). For the rst time in more than 300 years, most of the basin lay within one country, with the capital of that country in the basin. Previous occasions included the Mughal, Gandharan and Harappan eras. Not all areas of West Pakistan were included. The Northwest Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Northern Areas and Balochistan were relatively isolated and neglected, despite their intellectual, strategic and economic signi cance (Barth, 1956). They relied upon local water resources and deeply rooted community water rights and practices to guide water access and use. The Government of Pakistan extended rural development to the Northern Areas through its Village Aid Five-Year Plan in 1956, which encouraged construction of irrigation channels, sanitation facilities and wells in larger towns such as Gilgit (Clark, 1960). National territorial integration was linked with international geopolitics and economic development processes. Negotiations for an Indus Waters Treaty began in 1952, inspired in part by the Tennessee Valley Authority and its former director David Lilienthal (Government of Pakistan, 1953; Michel, 1967). Lilienthal argued that integrated river development might help defuse the Kashmir con ict and avoid another Korea. Although unrealistic on the rst point, this proposal did lead the World Bank and USA and other countries to fund river-basin planning and link treaty negotiations with economic development programmes (Ahmed, 1965). US and British engineering rms played an important role in planning large water projects in Pakistan, compared with India (Michel, 1967). The Ford Foundation and university advisers became involved in water-sector budgeting, national economic planning and bureaucratic restructuring. Water negotiations also prompted research on international water laws (Hodges, 1960). These economic development programmes also stimulated multilateral support for scienti c research in the basin, which included resource surveys, economic plans and engineering studies (Gulick 1963; Kirmani, 1956; Naqvi, 1959; Rahman, 1960). Surveys focused on land capability assessment, groundwater issues and soil degradation (e.g. Gorrie, 1948). The Pakistan Geological Survey launched extensive studies of hydrogeologic conditions and problems in the Indus (Farah, 1956; Kazmi, 1951). Comprehensive aerial photographic surveys were undertaken in the lower Indus valley (Hodges, 1956). Soil surveys in Punjab were sponsored by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the US Bureau of Reclamation and US Geological Survey. These early investigations contributed to the increasing use of the term Indus basin. Cultural and ecological dimensions of water management fell outside the formerly colonial and new international research paradigms, both of which focused on irrigation systems, hydropower and public health to the relative neglect of sheries, ood control and watershed management. In summary, the

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immediate post-colonial years witnessed a shift in the geographic scale of water management from provincial toward national water planning, while retaining a prominent role for provincial governments. This period saw continuing regional emphasis on irrigated areas of Punjab, Sindh and, to a lesser extent, NWFPto the relative neglect of rainfed and locally irrigated areas in the plains, Balochistan and Northern Areas. These geographic trends marked important steps toward integrated river basin development, albeit with limited emphasis on ood control, sheries or environmental management. These early trends, and their consequences, were fully manifested in the Indus Basin Development Programme. The Era of Indus Basin Development: 196075 The Indus Water Treaty launched a massive infrastructure development programme that included link canals, barrages and new reservoir storage to replace the waters of the Beas, Sutlej and Ravi rivers which were allocated by treaty to India (Biswas, 1992). The Indus Basin Development Programme (IBDP) was nanced by the World Bank, a consortium of friendly countries, and the Government of Pakistan. It contributed to further territorial and economic integration of the Indus irrigation system, supported by increased reliance on water systems engineering and planning. The Indus Basin Development Programme transformed the Indus basin in Pakistan into one of the largest irrigation and hydropower systems in the world, and most water resources research in the 1960s and 1970s was related to the implementation of the Programme. As Michel (1967) pointed out, Pakistan drew heavily upon foreign consultants, materials and methods compared with India, which concentrated on domestic engineering, planning and manufacturing capabilities. Although Michel recommended continuing comparisons of these approaches, only one detailed comparison of irrigation agriculture has been undertaken to date (Sims, 1988). In both countries, water problems were regarded primarily as large-scale engineering problems best addressed at the national scale and for the national interest. In Pakistan, a Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) was established to build and operate major dams and canals constructed by the Indus Basin Development Programme. These national policy changes stimulated research on public administration related to water resources that complemented engineering advances (e.g. Birkhead, 1966; Jones et al., 1974). The physical centrepiece of the emerging system was Tarbela Dam on the Indus main stem, which generated valuable energy but had unanticipated construction and nancial dif culties. To coordinate large-scale infrastructure investments, the World Bank commissioned Water and Power Resources of West Pakistan: A Study in Sector Planning (Lieftinck et al., 1968). This study developed computer models to optimize interdependent water development alternatives. It also provided general guidance for coordinating inter-subsectoral investments in groundwater development, drainage, hydroelectric power, agricultural inputs and economic sector planning. These methods of analysis were concurrently advanced by Ford Foundation and Harvard Water Project studies in Pakistan, and they proved in uential in Pakistani policy analysis beyond the water sector (e.g. Maass et al., 1962, Ford Foundation, 1965).

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This framework of analysiscombining operations research with empirical scienti c studieswas applied to regional groundwater problems. WAPDA commissioned studies by international consultants on groundwater issues in the upper and lower basins of the Indus that shaped, in turn, WAPDAs water sector plans and Government of Pakistan ve-year plans (Hunting Technical Services & Sir M. MacDonald and Partners, 1965; Tipton & Kalmbach, 1963). Harza Engineering Company synthesized these regional plans into a national master plan (Harza Engineering Company International, 1964). A separate, highly in uential groundwater study was produced by the White House Department of Interior Panel on Waterlogging and Salinity in West Pakistan (1964). The Revelle Report, as it was known, recommended greater emphasis on large-scale public tubewells over shallow tubewells and surfacedrainage systems. It stressed formal economic and institutional analysis along with improved agricultural extension, education and agronomic improvements. The report generated a stimulating policy and scholarly debate (e.g. see Mohammad, 1964; Ahmad, 1965; Dorfman et al., 1965). Although some of the institutional proposals of the Revelle Report (e.g. integration of water and agriculture programmes at the national and provincial levels) were not tested until decades later, the report helped increase attention on groundwater issues during this period of massive surface water development. Although water resources research and planning in this period concentrated on national economic and engineering plans, and had a top-down perspective on governance, several initiatives dealt with local and regional issues in the Northern Areas. Regional water studies and projects in the Northern Areas increased following the abolition of feudal mountain states and the construction of the Karakoram Highway between Pakistan and China. The highway linked the headwaters of the basin with the plains, which would later trigger major social and environmental transformations. To guide these changes, the Government of Pakistan initiated rural development projects in the Northern Areas (e.g. suspension bridges, networks of jeepable roads, and the collection of hydrological and precipitation data at Gilgit). Less attention was given in this period to social aspects of water resource use in the upper Indus. In summary, the 1960s and early 1970s marked the culmination of a national basinwide scale of water planning, supported by international research on water systems engineering, hydrogeology and public administration. This large-scale, scienti c and top-down strategy had parallels in the USA, Soviet Union and China, and it had consequences that have yet to be fully appraised. Artisanal sheries, watershed management and water pollution did not capture suf cient policy attention to alter the path or re ne the approaches of national water development. Efforts were made to bring formerly marginal geographic regions of the Northern Areas and Balochistan into the orbit of national governance, economic planning and scienti c modernization. These efforts encountered, and in some ways aggravated, irrigation and environmental problems, leading to a new paradigm. Management and Environmental Movements: 19752000 The 1970s witnessed tensions related to economic, environmental and institutional performance in the water sector, which led to new paradigms for water management. Concerns began to grow that national water sector expenditures

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were not yielding expected agricultural and economic bene ts; that they adversely affected environmental quality; and that they failed to support local water institutions. At a broader level of governance, the 1972 war with India and independence of Bangladesh diminished the authority of national military and bureaucratic institutions that had directed large-scale water development. These three challenges of governance, economic performance and environmental quality contributed to the shift from development to management. The term management referred to measures of physical water control, economic ef ciency and institutional capacity. It encompassed concerns for the ef ciency, equity and governance of water systems. It shifted attention from national to regional, community and on-farm scales of water use. This devolution of planning within the main irrigation system was paralleled, and stimulated, by increasing recognition of water management expertise and innovation in socially and geographically marginal areas, including mountain villages of Northern Pakistan and katchi abadis of Karachi (Allan, 1986; Khan, 1998; World Bank, 1990). The management and environment revolutions brought greater attention to seven substantive elds: (1) irrigation management; (2) ood hazards mitigation; (3) groundwater management and drainage planning; (4) domestic water supply and sanitation; (5) urban water planning; (6) environmental management; and (7) integrated water sector management.

(1) Irrigation Management The management revolution began in the irrigation subsector, and focused on physical and socioeconomic aspects of water management. A USAID-funded On-Farm Water Management (OFWM) Project focused on deteriorating watercourses and inef cient irrigation practices in Central Punjab (Inayutullah, 1996; Lowdermilk, 1976; Clyma et al., 1977). One of the most signi cant innovations of the project involved experiments with innovative participatory methods, such as water users associations, to improve agricultural productivity. The On-Farm Water Management Projects early successes in reducing physical water losses through irrigation ef ciency led to widespread adoption in the 1980s and 1990s (USAID, 1982; WAPDA, 1990; Byrnes, 1992). Irrigation management research in the plains expanded from watercourse improvement to include issues of equity (Bhutta & Vander Velde, 1992; Vander Velde & Tirmizi, 1999); environmental quality (Ahmad & Kutcher, 1992; Kijne & Kuper, 1995); economic ef ciency (Chaudhry et al., 1993; World Bank, 1994); and institutional and policy reforms (Bandaragoda & Badruddin, 1992; Strosser & Kuper, 1994). Regional exchange of experience and expertise in these elds occurred under the auspices of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI, formerly IIMI) and other bilateral and multilateral organizations (e.g. see Bandaragoda, 1998; Murray-Rust & Vander Velde, 1994; Vander Velde & Kijne, 1992). Although accompanied by innovative policy experiments (e.g. command water management) and increasing government recognition, these trends have not brought about a major shift from bureaucratic to participatory water management. In the Northern Areas, innovative programmes of local irrigation investment and management were supported by the Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) (Khan & Khan, 1992; World Bank, 1990). In Balochistan, local adjustments to water supply uncertainty and scarcity (e.g. in spate irrigation,

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sailaba practices and karez systems) have drawn attention (Kahlown & Hamilton, 1994, 1996; Van Steenbergen, 1997). (2) Groundwater Management and Drainage Planning The Revised Action Programme (RAP) for the 1980s recommended leaving groundwater development to the private sector (WAPDA, 1979). This recommendation resulted in programmes to effect a major transition from large public to private managed tubewells (known as the SCARP transition) (World Bank, 1997a). With the completion of major dams and canals, problems of waterlogging, salinity and drainage became high priorities for Pakistani engineers and planners (WAPDA, 1990). A National Drainage Plan was prepared to coordinate regional groundwater and drainage programmes (World Bank, 1997b). Signi cantly, it sought to treat drainage issues as environmental issues, thereby underscoring the escalating concern for environmental aspects of water management (Ahmad & Kutcher, 1992). Physical projects included the vast and expensive Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) and a proposed Right Bank Outfall Drain (Mott MacDonald International and Hunting Technical Services, 1992). More recent management responses to groundwater problems have included marketbased strategies and conjunctive management (Meinzen-Dick, 1996). (3) Flood Hazards Mitigation Floods in 1973 caused extraordinary damage and revealed that single events could undo years of development. This realization prompted the rst national ood investigation (Harza Engineering Co. International, 1975). Flood protection was a provincial responsibility prior to independence. After 1973, the federal government sought to coordinate provincial and national ood protection efforts through a Central Flood Committee and later a Federal Flood Commission (FFC). In contrast with the irrigation and drainage subsectors, however, ood hazards planning has continued to concentrate on physical measures of ood control, compared with social vulnerability and non-structural methods for mitigating ood damages (see Mustafa, 1998; Mustafa & Wescoat, 1997). In the mountainous north, ood-control programmes have improved snowmelt and runoff monitoring in the upper Indus and Jhelum basins, and ice-dam outburst forecasting, but have generally neglected local ood hazards adjustments and mitigation (Dey et al., 1983; Hewitt, 1982). (4) Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Notwithstanding the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (198190), improvements in domestic water supply and sanitation have occurred slowly and largely independently from other subsectors. Programmes have encouraged appropriate technology; participatory approaches; and local nancing, operations and maintenance (Pasha & McGarry, 1989; Altaf et al., 1993). The linkages between irrigation and health have received more recent attention from IWMI (van der Hoek et al., 1999). With the exception of pilot projects by the Aga Khan Health Service, attempts to improve rural water supply and sanitation in the Northern Areas have been ill-conceived, poorly coordinated and disappointing relative to projected goals for the region (Halvorson, 1995; WASEP, 1998).

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Problems of water supply and quality in urbanizing regions are also acute, particularly in metropolitan Karachi, Islamabad-Rawalpindi and Lahore; and in secondary cities of Punjab and Sindh (Altaf, 1994). A project of the Lahore Development Authority and World Bank linked improvements in urban water infrastructure with cultural heritage conservation in the Walled City (Wescoat, 1995). Karachi had massive World Bank- nanced water and sanitation projects during the 1980s, interrupted by nancial problems, political crises and ethnic con ict. Two of the most successful and best-documented models of communitybased sanitation improvements in the Karachi area are the Orangi Pilot Project (Khan, 1998) and the Baldia Soakpit Project (Bakhteari and Wegelin-Schuringa, 1992). The water and environmental problems of urbanizing and peri-urban regions are likely to worsen as rural-to-urban migration increases.

(6) Environmental Management Environmental aspects of water management in Pakistan have received increasing governmental and non-governmental attention. Pakistans National Conservation Strategy includes thoughtful sections on water resources. The World Conservation Union (IUCN-Karachi) has launched water and environmental protection projects in the Indus delta (e.g. Akhtar et al., 1997; Meynell, 1991). The Indus basin model developed for irrigation water sector analysis has recently been adapted to assess environmental aspects of groundwater management and potential effects of global climate change in the Indus basin (Ahmad & Kutcher, 1992; Wescoat, 1992; Leichenko & Wescoat, 1993). One of the strongest records of environmental research to date has developed in the Northern Areas. The National Conservation Strategy includes chapters on highland watersheds, and international symposia on conservation of the KarakorumHindukush Himalaya include research on water resources.

(7) Integrated Water Sector Management Integration of water and environmental management initiatives in Pakistan is at an early stage of development. For example, a Command Water Management (CWM) Project sought to coordinate water programmes at the regional scale, with limited success (ISPAN, 1989). On the other hand, the Water Sector Investment Planning Study (WSIPS) took important steps toward coordinating Federal and Provincial Planning efforts. Almost immediately after its completion an inter-provincial water accord was signed in 1991 that hoped to end a century of upstreamdownstream rivalry between the provinces (Afzal, 1995). The National Drainage Programme Project has focused on environmental aspects of drainage projects (NESPAK and Mott MacDonald, 1993). One of the greatest challenges for integration lies in the governance of water systems. Despite increasing emphasis on integrating farmer participation and decentralized control in planning documents (WAPDA, 1990), these approaches have received little more than lip-service in eld management. Provincial irrigation departments and WAPDA continue to manage large-scale irrigation systems in an institutional culture that favours engineering solutions over social ones.

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Recently, the World Bank has revived the area-based approach to water management and linked it with water pricing and privatization policies to be implemented by regional water utilities, a proposal that has met signi cant opposition (World Bank, 1994).

Toward a Fifty-year Perspective on Indus Basin Management and Articulated Adaptive Management (AAM) Previous reviews have examined one or more of these three periods of water management (WAPDA, 1990). But to our knowledge, they have not developed a half-century perspective that has relevance for future water planning. The Pakistan Country Report: Vision for Water for the 21st Century (Pakistan Water Partnership, 1999) lays out a bold plan for progressive transformation of water resources governance, economics and environmental quality. What insights does a 50-year perspective yield that could help achieve those aims? This section of our paper sketches out some answers to this question. Taken together, they constitute a framework for managing complex water systems that we call Articulated Adaptive Management (AAM) (for reviews of adaptive management in the water sector, see Walters, 1997; NRC, 1999). The half-century perspective developed in this paper on the Indus basin development in Pakistan suggests ve main principles: (1) Plan for Crises. Few plans explicitly acknowledge the possibility, let alone likelihood of economic, political and environmental crises. In the eld of adaptive management, these are called surprises that test the resilience of ecosystems, livelihoods and management institutions. A 50-year perspective on the Indus basin highlights such crises and changes in the basic assumptions and aims of water management. It sheds light on the frequency, consequences and ef cacy of alternative responses to crises. It also reveals how and when crises can stimulate innovation. (2) Plan for Multiple Strategies to Achieve Governance Goals. The Vision for Water in the 21st Century underscores the importance of good governance (Pakistan Water Partnership, 1999). The past half-century of experience sheds light on both the inertia of historical institutions and the dynamic changes that occur during periods of political change. These changes in governance are related, in ways that are not fully understood or discussed, to adjustments in surface and groundwater irrigation; systems performance; and environmental quality. They suggest a three-pronged strategy of: (a) incremental reform for periods of stable governance; (b) episodic breakthroughs for periods of strong local participation and political leadership; and (c) risk management for periods of political instability. (3) Plan at Multiple Geographic Scales of Water Management. The vision of midcentury was integrated river basin management at the national scale. That vision partially displaced an earlier pattern of provincial control, and it was succeeded by increasing emphasis on command area, community and household scales. A 50-year perspective also indicates major changes in multilateral and bilateral water programmes. These changing intergovernmental relations and linkages are rarely managed well, which underscores the

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importance of articulating water management programmes at multiple geographic scales, from the household to international levels of political economy, and from the farm plot to landscape and bioregional scales of ecosystem management. (4) Plan to Support Varied Patterns of Regional Water Management and Innovation. Agro-economic models recognize that different crops require different irrigation management regimes, but this principle receives less support in regional and national water planning where one size is often expected to t all (M. Ahmad, World Bank, personal communication 1998). Articulating a range of regional approaches, and linkages among them, requires exibility and an ability to translate concepts and methods across different water management cultures. The fty-year perspective reveals a range of water management approaches across the provinces, districts and agro-economic zones of Pakistan. It reminds us that regions once regarded as marginal can become sources of innovation, precisely because they lie outside the main system and can therefore become sites of experimentation. (5) Plan for Scienti c and Societal Experimentation with Water and Environmental Management Alternatives. The past half-century of experience in the Indus Basin of Pakistan indicates that the main system has been an important laboratory for water management (Lieftinck et al., 1968; Duloy & OMara, 1984; WAPDA, 1990; Ahmad & Kutcher, 1992; World Bank, 1997b). Adaptive management stresses the role that science (broadly de ned to include social inquiry) can play in managing complex water systems (Holling, 1978). While Pakistan has pioneered large-scale experimentation in the irrigation sector, it has not yet extended these experiments to embrace the full scope of ecosystem management, social learning and cultural values in water (Gunderson et al., 1995).

These principles, derived from experience in the Indus basin of Pakistan, collectively point toward a model of Articulated Adaptive Management (AAM). Although this model has much in common with other international experiments in adaptive environmental management, experience in the Indus basin sheds new light on ways to craft exible approaches to water management in highly varied and dynamic cultural, environmental and policy contexts. These contexts will require new tools, including decision support systems for visualization and representation of water management alternatives. The next version of the Indus Basin Model might strive to become a decision support system for adaptive management (cf. Ahmad & Kutcher, 1992). Pakistans Vision for the 21st Century and the framework for Articulated Adaptive Management complement one another. The Vision strives for progressive transformation, comparable with those that occurred in the eras of early independence, the Indus Basin Development Programme and the emerging management paradigm. It strives to break the bonds of historical precedents and problems. The Articulated Adaptive Management model cautions visionaries to also plan for crises, changes in governance, multiple scales of water management, diverse regional patterns of water management, and a scienti c and societal approach for monitoring, evaluating and adjusting water management experiments.

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Conclusion The Indus basin of Pakistan has been a premier laboratory for water resources research and management during the second half of the 20th century. Fifty years after independence, Pakistan can rightly consider its water resources experiments and systems to have international as well as national and local importance. This paper has reviewed some of the main accomplishments, including the extraordinary adjustments to Partition, completion of the Indus Basin Development Programme, and evolving management and environmental revolutions. When reviewing these accomplishments and associated problems, the paper concentrated on dynamic changes in the geographic scales and regional patterns of water management. It revealed how the solutions of one period led to problems that shaped research and development agendas of subsequent periods. It traced how some water issues, e.g. ood hazards mitigation, are beginning to receive greater attention, while others, e.g. domestic water supply and sanitation, still remain largely outside the water and power sector and are therefore not well integrated with mainstream water management. Of the three cross-cutting themes identi ed at the beginning of the paper (economic development, governance and environmental management), economic development has received the most thorough attention to date. The Indus Basin models and empirical studies of the economic value of water in Pakistan indicate how much can be achieved when substantial resources and numbers of scholars focus on a topic over half a century. Despite large literatures on public administration and politics in Pakistan, governance of water resource systems is an under-developed theme in the scienti c literature. Tensions between national, regional and local scale institutions continue. Some important experiments were noted (e.g. the OFWM and CWM projects). But water sector institutions in Pakistan remain predominantly national, bureaucratic and elitist in outlook. Innovations in local governance in the Northern Areas, NWFP and some cities represent a shift that may have relevance for all aspects of water management in Pakistan. The connection between water resources and environmental management, although promising, is tenuous. Environmental assessment of proposed plans has expanded in scope and detail, but there have been no comprehensive ex post evaluations of environmental effects of completed water projects (though see World Commission on Dams, Tarbela case study, http://www.dams.org). And aside from a limited number of protected areas, there has been little progress toward ecosystem management in the Indus basin. To address problems that developed over decades this paper derived principles from the historical record that resonate both with emerging principles of adaptive environmental management and with Pakistans vision statement for the 21st century. Over the past 50 years, visionary and established water management approaches have often clashed, and polarization of debate may once again occur between non-governmental organizations and water bureaucracies. This paper points toward a middle path of historical-geographic analysis and careful experimentation in a water system characterized by crisis, complexity and diversity. This middle path could advance the Indus basins historical role as a water resources laboratory of international, as well as local and regional, importance.

Water Management in the Indus Basin Acknowledgements

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This paper grew out of a literature review prepared for the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. Bibliographic methods combined electronic searches in Worldcat, Dissertation Abstracts, Geobase, Water Resources Abstracts, British Library of Development Studies, and Medline databases, with eld collection of project documents and reports. The authors would like to thank the Aga Khan Health Service, Fulbright Foundation, Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority, PIEDAR, Social Science Research Council, US Environmental Protection Agency, US National Science Foundation, and Smithsonian Institution for supporting their eld research in Pakistan.

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