“Climate Change and Water Scarcity: the role of Pakistani institutions and their adaptive capacity”

Abstract

Pakistan is one of the developing countries which contributes a very less amount in the emission of greenhouse gasses but has been struck by the most vigorous effects of climate change. Among many other challenges the major challenge that climate change has brought up on Pakistan is the problem of water scarcity and water insecurity and as water is an important component within any society and has an impact on all aspects of social life, it is very important that we focus on the issues regarding its management and governance and Pakistan‘s vulnerability is high because of its dependence on agriculture which is highly climate sensitive and need proper water management. Pakistan has long been characterized by poor vision, the thirst for power and corruption which have cumulatively prevented each successive government and institutions from focusing on a well thought out and legitimate plan for improving the country‘s state of affairs in terms of climate change and its water management as a result of which Pakistan currently has a status of ―severely water stressed country‖. This research therefore aims to study the interaction between climate change and water scarcity and water insecurity and to study knowledge that policy makers and national and international governmental institutions/actors have on vulnerability and adaptation. For this the research study employs a qualitative and quantitative approach involving the collection of both primary and secondary data in order to determine whether a significant relationship exists between the variables such as climate change and water scarcity/water insecurity and to find out the role that the intervening variables which are national and international governmental and non-governmental institutions/actors play. For this purpose, Qualtrics and NVIVO analysis was used to identify distinctive patterns in the data. The result of the empirical analysis thus revealed that there was a greater relationship between climate change and water scarcity/water insecurity and indicates that the main reason of it appears to be the lack of institutional capacity in terms of inefficient work force and untrained man power, budgetary constraints and lack of funding, lack of resources and technical capacity, political disturbances and lack of knowledge and awareness which leads to the conclusion that there is a need of climate change education and awareness at governmental and local level which will help in capacity building of researchers, policy makers, governmental and local level institutions and local communities.