Why Kalabagh Dam is not an option

For decades, the Kalabagh Dam has been pitched as the silver bullet to Pakistan's water and power challenges. By the numbers, it promises thousands of megawatts of hydropower and millions of acre-feet of stored water.

On the ground, however, it represents division, mistrust and ecological risk. No matter how many times it returns to the national agenda, Kalabagh Dam is not an option, and the sooner we face this reality, the better.

The project has never achieved a shared understanding of the problem among Pakistan's provinces. Punjab views it as a means of securing irrigation and generating cheap energy.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa fears the submergence of Nowshera and large-scale displacement. Sindh views it as an existential threat to the Indus Delta. Even Balochistan, less directly affected, has often sided with Sindh in solidarity.

The result is a stalemate. Attempts at mediation, whether during Zia's regime in the 1980s or Musharraf's in the 2000s, collapsed under provincial resistance. No civilian or military government has secured a consensus.

The emotional charge of the debate makes it even harder. For years, the conversation has been fought on political and sentimental grounds, often framed as a test of loyalty to Punjab or as a symbol of defiance against India. Neither side roots its arguments in scientific hydrology or climate realities. The rhetoric has drowned out the facts.

The Indus Delta is already dying. Mangroves have vanished, saltwater intrusion is rising and communities are abandoning their homes. Any new upstream storage without strict environmental flow guarantees will worsen this collapse. For millions in Sindh, Kalabagh is not an engineering plan; it is the death of their ecosystem. Trust in federal assurances is so low that even the perception of risk is enough to keep the project untenable.

The dam's location further undermines its case. The worst floods of recent years have come from glacial lake outbursts in the north and hill torrents in southern Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan. Kalabagh, sitting midstream, cannot control those flows. Nor can it protect cities like Karachi or Islamabad from urban cloudburst flooding.

In a climate era defined by unpredictability, glacier surges, erratic monsoons and extreme heat, Pakistan needs distributed storage, drainage systems and aquifer recharge, not a single mega-structure in the wrong place.

The Indus Basin no longer behaves in predictable patterns. Relying on a single massive project in an era of climate non-stationarity is reckless.

As emphasised by the Water Diplomacy Framework developed at Tufts University by Prof Shafiqul Islam and Prof Lawrence Susskind, water challenges must be treated as complex networks of flows, infrastructures, and institutions. Their research shows that sustainable solutions require adaptive portfolios of smaller, flexible interventions, not single-bet megaprojects.

Kalabagh, by concentrating risk in one dam and one political flashpoint, represents exactly the kind of centralised gamble that climate finance institutions now avoid. Kalabagh is not only a domestic issue. India, as the upper riparian under the Indus Waters Treaty, suspended data sharing in 2025 and has begun operating reservoirs outside the agreed-upon rules. In this fragile context, any large new Pakistani dam will not be seen as neutral; it will be read as a provocation.

The risks also extend below the surface. The Indus aquifer is shared between Pakistan and India. Studies warn that Punjab and Rajasthan's groundwater could be 75% depleted by 2050. A massive reservoir like Kalabagh may alter recharge patterns and shift salinity gradients across the border.

If fertile land in India becomes saline or waterlogged, food production in South Asia, already a breadbasket for global wheat, rice and cotton, will suffer. That, in turn, would push food insecurity onto global markets.

Here lies the blunt truth: no international financial institution will fund Kalabagh. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank may have shown interest in the 1980s and 1990s, but both backed away once ecological risks and provincial opposition became clear.

Today, climate safeguards and food security are at the heart of global financing. As negotiation experts at the Consensus Building Institute (CBI) have shown, durable agreements emerge only through joint fact-finding and mutual gains approaches.

Kalabagh has never undergone such a process, which is why global lenders see it as unbankable. Multilateral banks cannot underwrite a project that worsens delta collapse, threatens fertile land and sparks transboundary disputes.

Even private capital, wary of reputational and climate risk, would steer clear. The Kalabagh story is also a story of political fault lines. It was championed aggressively during General Ziaul Haq's rule in the 1980s, framed as a symbol of modernisation and strength.

Wapda and the Planning Commission reintroduced it repeatedly in their water and power plans, producing domestic feasibility studies but little consensus. Punjab's leadership, from the PML-N to the PTI, has largely supported the project. Sindh's PPP has led the opposition, citing water theft and delta destruction.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s ANP and PTI governments have objected to submergence risks. Balochistan, though less directly affected, has often backed Sindh. The result: endless conferences, parliamentary debates, even Supreme Court petitions, but no agreement. The Musharraf government came closest to pushing it, but retreated in the face of provincial resistance. To this day, Kalabagh remains the most polarising word in Pakistan’s water politics.

The alternative is not inaction. Pakistan urgently needs a no-regrets water security portfolio that builds resilience across multiple fronts. This includes canal and barrage rehabilitation to reduce water losses, along with managed aquifer recharge and floodplain restoration to store surpluses during wet years.

Smaller off-channel storages should be developed where ecological and political feasibility exists, while agriculture must shift towards higher water productivity through crop switching and more efficient irrigation methods. Equally important is the restoration of guaranteed environmental flows to revive the Indus Delta.

Collectively, these measures deliver immediate, distributed resilience. They spread risk rather than concentrating it in one mega-project, and they are far more likely to attract international financing because they align with global priorities for climate adaptation and food security.

Kalabagh Dam is not being rejected on engineering grounds alone. It fails every test that matters in today's Pakistan: governance, legitimacy, ecology, geography and financing. It cannot manage the floods we face, it cannot unite the provinces, it cannot win the trust of neighbours, and it cannot secure the backing of global lenders.

The debate may continue on emotional grounds, Punjab versus Sindh, nationalist pride versus provincial identity, but the scientific, political and financial verdict is clear. Kalabagh Dam is not an option. Insisting on it only delays the solutions Pakistan desperately needs: adaptive, equitable, climate-smart water management that strengthens the federation rather than divides it.

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.

The writer is a public policy expert and leads the Country Partner Institute of the World Economic Forum in Pakistan. He tweets/posts @amirjahangir and can be reached at: [email protected]

Originally published in The News