Securing a resilient future for Pakistan: How hydro-economic modeling guides evidence-based adaptation

Davies, Stephen; Ali, Muhammad Tahir; Akram, Iqra; Hafeez, Mohsin; Ringler, Claudia

Securing a resilient future for Pakistan: How hydro-economic modeling guides evidence-based adaptation

Autores

Editor

CGIAR System Organization

Descripción

Pakistan’s water crisis has steadily evolved into a binding constraint on economic growth, food security, and climate resilience. Behind this crisis lie the tightly coupled challenges of rapid groundwater depletion, rising energy costs for pumping, overreliance on water-intensive crops such as rice and sugarcane, and increasing climate variability. This calls for solutions that recognize the water–energy–food–environment (WEFE) nexus. For years, policy discussions acknowledged these interlinkages; yet decision-making largely relied on sector-by-sector evidence, making it difficult to anticipate economywide consequences of water-related reforms. What was missing was a nationally relevant hydro-economic framework capable of quantifying trade-offs, synergies, and distributional effects of alternative policy pathways. Policymakers and researchers have long understood this need but have taken limited steps to develop such a framework until recently – with the development and launch of the Hydro-Economic Decision Support System.