Pakistan: A Mythical River Silently Dies Under the Effects of Climate Change

Habibullah Khatti visits his mother’s grave one last time. He steps heavily away from his village, where the once fertile land is covered by a crust of salt: the Indus delta in Pakistan. About fifteen kilometers from his island of Abdullah Mirbahar, the mythical river of South Asia flows into the Arabian Sea. Once, this area was abundant with fishing and agriculture.

However, today, this network of natural waterways, which stretches over 3,000 kilometers across the Indo-Pakistani landscape, is drying up due to coastal erosion and salinization. "Saltwater now surrounds us on all sides," laments Mr. Khatti, a former fisherman who has been forced to switch to sewing.

At 54, he remembers the time when fishing sustained the 150 households in the village. But everything changed in the delta since the 1950s.

The Delta is 'Sinking and Drying'

Upstream, dams, irrigation systems, and the effects of climate change have reduced the water flow by 80%, reported the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water in 2018. Consequently, downstream, the sea — and especially its salt — has been able to infiltrate more easily. Since 1990, the salinity of the Indus water has increased by over 70%, rendering the land barren and threatening biodiversity, particularly shrimp and crab populations.

Today, only four families remain. Mr. Khatti's family is preparing to move to Karachi, the economic capital 150 km away. "It’s terrifying. At night, the silence is oppressive," he shares amid the stray dogs haunting the abandoned traditional bamboo huts.

In 20 years, more than 1.2 million residents have had to leave the Indus delta, according to the Jinnah Institute, a think-tank of a former climate change minister in Islamabad. "The delta is both sinking and drying up," warns Muhammad Ali Anjum from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Already about forty villages in the Kharo Chan district have submerged — the population has decreased from 26,000 to 11,000 between 1981 and 2023. The Indus originates in Tibet, traverses Kashmir, then flows through all of Pakistan, irrigating about 80% of the country’s agricultural land with its tributaries.

Its delta, formed by the rich sediments deposited by the river at its mouth, was once teeming with mangroves. However, over 16% of fertile land has become barren as seawater began to spill into the river, reported the government in 2019.

'At the End of Our Rope'

Even worse, in the city of Keti Bandar, located in the heart of the delta, drinking water must be transported by boat and then on donkey back for miles, while a white layer of salt crystals covers the ground. "Who voluntarily abandons their homeland? You have to be at the end of your rope to do that," states Haji Karam Jat, who had to rebuild a wooden house inland after his was engulfed by rising waters.

According to the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, which advocates for fishing communities, tens of thousands of Pakistanis have already left coastal areas due to the salinization of the delta. "We haven't just lost our land; we have lost our culture," laments Fatima Majeed, an activist and member of the forum, whose grandfather emigrated from Kharo Chan to the suburbs of Karachi.

The provincial government of Sindh has launched a mangrove restoration project — a natural barrier against the encroaching saltwater — but struggles to curb illegal construction and land grabbing. British colonists were the first to alter the course of the Indus by building canals and dams, followed in recent years by dozens of hydropower projects.

New threats have emerged this year: the army attempted to dig irrigation canals in Punjab upstream — only to back down in the face of protests from Sindh farmers, where the river meets the sea. This incident once again highlighted the competition between provinces for water. And at the end of April, India announced the unilateral repeal of the 1960 treaty governing the sharing of Indus waters between the two rival nations. Now more than ever, the water war rages in the delta.