Australian govt agrees to help Pakistan to further develop Water Apportionment Accord Tool

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Fawad Yousafzai

 November 17, 2023

Published in: The Nation

ISLAMABAD-To deal with impact of hydrological uncertainty in Indus Basin Irrigation System, caused by changing climate, and ensure transparency in water sharing among the provinces, the Australian government has agreed to help Pakistan to further develop the Water Apportionment Accord Tool so as to incorporate/ develop mid-season planning module in the tool.
The decision in this regard was announced by the representatives of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) in a meeting with Indus River System Authority, WAPDA and provinces.
Sometimes, due to climate change there is sudden decline in flows in river system during mid-season, as against the anticipation of the IRSA for the entire season. The WAA-Tool is in operation for the last four seasons and is efficiently working to provide data for the seasonal advance planning; however, now it has been necessitated to incorporate/ develop mid-season planning module in the tool. Pakistan operates the world’s largest contiguous irrigation system, the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) spanning all the four provinces. 
According to IRSA spokesperson, Khalid Rana, IBIS, which is under increasing pressure from population growth and climate change, provides water, energy and food security for the nation. Since 1993, water resources of the Indus River System have been shared among the four provinces of Pakistan according to the WAA 1991 by IRSA. The water distribution process is a complex set of procedures which takes considerable time and man hours to fully execute at the start of each cropping season. For different scenarios, the process is often repeated adding even much more time and effort on the part of IRSA technical personnel. Although common computer software is used as a tool to carry out the different steps but the whole process is very time-consuming, disjointed and not automated. 
Through a joint collaborative effort – conducted under the Australia-Pakistan Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Water Management – by Pakistani and Australian governments through the entities from the Pakistani side of Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR), IRSA, WAPDA, Provincial Irrigation Departments (PIDs) and from the Australian side of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research(ACIAR), the WAA-Tool was developed over a four years period from 2018 to 2022. 
The initial versions of the tool have been in operation since December 2020 by the stakeholders in Pakistan, being the tool of choice, and have been actively employed to aid in informed decision making for advance seasonal planning, operation of reservoir and river network and distribution of the water resources of the Indus River System between the provinces as per policies of WAA 1991. During the utilisation of the software tool, IRSA and the stakeholders identified the next steps required to sustain the investment continued and more intensive training of a wider audience; and expanding its use to capture the mid-season allocation planning process which is often required to revise the system operational parameters due to changed inflows, storages, demands, etc, owing to hydrological uncertainty caused by climate change.
To discuss other ancillary steps in the software’s development, representatives of ACIAR and CSIRO, namely — Dr Neil Lazarow, Dr Munawwar Kazmi, Dr Mobin Ud Din Ahmad and Ms Sue Cuddy met with members and technical personnel of IRSA. Both sides discussed the way-forward to further develop the WAA-Tool so as to incorporate/ develop mid-season planning module in the WAA-Tool. The Australian team has agreed to help Pakistan to develop mid-season planning module in the WAA-Tool. Neil Lazarow presented to chairman IRSA a report of ACIAR’s mandate, past activities and future plans.

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