DefinePK

Abstract

Pakistan’s Green Pakistan Initiative (GPI), launched in 2023 by COAS Asim Munir and Prime Minister Sharif to modernize agriculture via six new irrigation canals. The project would turn millions of acres of what is described as barren wasteland into farmland, which has seen fierce resistance in the Sindh province. As the lower-riparian province on the Indus, Sindh has apprehensions that diversion of canals upstream will reduce the historic water entitlement. This paper is a critical review of the GPI according to legal and policy perspectives with regard to its consistency and compliance with the constitutional water sharing arrangements (the 1991 Water Apportionment Accord and Article 155 of the Constitution), as well as international water law principles. Investigating the rationale and range of the GPI trough doctrinal approach to research, the identifying key parameters within which the GPI functions in the federal water-governance system of Pakistan, the paper polls legal acts, intergovernmental policies and expert analyses available in the field. In the analysis, it is noted that the top-down of the GPI has so far faced limited provincial acquiescence in much of its resource planning, calling into question its processes under Article 155/CCI as well as the common-law equitable-riparian principles of international law (including their duties not to use resources in a manner that deprives downstream parties of a reasonable share or causes them harm by any means.