Iffat Idris, GSDRC, University of Birmingham
Pakistan has been in the international news twice so far this year. First, in spring 2025, for renewed conflict with India following a terrorist attack in Indian Administered Kashmir, IAK. Second, from late June to September, for devastating floods across the country. While, on initial reading, these events appear unconnected there are in fact strong links between them. Moreover, competition for water could become an even bigger driver of conflict between Pakistan and India than the historic dispute over Kashmir.
Renewed conflict with India
On 22 April 2025, gunmen killed 26 people — 25 tourists and a guide — in an attack on Pahalgam, IAK. India blamed Pakistan-backed insurgent groups for the attack, while Pakistan denied involvement and called for an independent investigation. India responded to the attack by closing the border with Pakistan, stopping bilateral trade and suspending the Indus River Water Treaty (IRWT), which regulates division of Indus River waters between the two countries (see later). Pakistan in turn closed its border and stopped all trade with India, as well as threatening to suspend all bilateral treaties with India, including the Simla Agreement which was reached after the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War.
On 6 May the situation escalated further, as India launched military strikes on targets in both Pakistan-Administered Kashmir (PAK) and Pakistan ‘proper’. India claimed to have hit terrorist infrastructure, but Pakistan accused it of targeting civilians. Pakistan responded with strikes of its own, leading to more from India, each country going after the other’s military infrastructure. There was also exchange of small-arms fire across the Line of Control (LOC), the de facto border between Indian and Pakistan-Administered parts of Kashmir. However, a ceasefire was agreed on 10 May — something for which President Trump has claimed credit — and this has so far held. The border remains closed and bilateral trade suspended.
Any hostilities between neighbouring nuclear armed powers are alarming. Even more so given the long history of the Indo-Pakistan conflict. There have been three full-scale wars since the two countries gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, plus the smaller-scale Kargil conflict in 1999. The very rapid escalation in May to military strikes was a disturbing new development. Nonetheless, the situation was defused. For both sides, the costs and risks of another war far outweigh any potential gains in Kashmir.
Devastating floods in Pakistan
From late June to September 2025, Pakistan has been hit by catastrophic floods: over four million people have been displaced, thousands of acres of crops ruined, infrastructure destroyed, and over 900 people killed. This is not the first time the country has faced such devastation. Just three years prior monsoon rains affected 33 million people, causing about 1,700 deaths, and over US$30 billion of damage. The recurrent large-scale floods — along with other extreme weather events, drought in parts of the country, rising temperatures coupled with rising sea levels — are the effects of climate change. Pakistan is the seventh most vulnerable country in the world to climate change. Moreover the impact of climate change is forecast to increase in the coming decades.
Water scarcity in Pakistan
Access to water is especially challenging for Pakistan. It has already moved from being water stressed (where demand outstrips supply, putting strain on resources) to water scarcity (a more structural problem, referring to a fundamental lack of water resources). In 2023, per capita annual water availability in Pakistan fell to 930 cubic metres (below 1,000 cubic metres, the threshold for water scarcity) and the country is predicted to slip into absolute water scarcity by 2035. Pakistan is currently ranked the 15th most water-stressed nation in the world.
This has major implications for all aspects of life in Pakistan. Increasing areas of the country can no longer support agriculture, fishing or other traditional sources of livelihood. As water scarcity intensifies, people are forced to migrate, placing additional stress on other areas. Food security is threatened — this, and lack of access to clean water, could lead to alarming health outcomes. The problem is made worse by rapid population growth, which is expected to rise from the current 250 million to 403 million by 2050. The looming crisis is so severe that securing water ‘is now a matter of national survival’.
Importance of the Indus River system
Pakistan is dependent for virtually all its water on the Indus River system, which comes into the country from Indian Kashmir (its origin is in Tibet). In 1960, the World Bank helped the two sides negotiate the IRWT to agree on division of the Indus River waters and provide a mechanism for dispute resolution. The IRWT assigns the waters of the western rivers (Indus, Chenab, Jhelum) to Pakistan and those of the eastern rivers (Ravi, Sutlej, Bias) to India. Both countries have the right to use each other’s waters for domestic reasons (e.g. power generation, agriculture) provided such usage does not lower the quantity and flow of water in the rivers of the other country.
As noted, India suspended the IRWT in the wake of the Pahalgam attack. But even before this, the treaty had been increasingly under strain as the effects of climate change on the Indus River system have intensified. In the short term, rising temperatures cause increased glacial melting (and thus floods) as well as altered hydrologic patterns (peak flows moving earlier in the year, and more variability). But long term, because the glaciers are diminishing, water supply through the Indus River system will decline.
Pakistan’s water scarcity challenge is made worse by factors within the country itself: reliance on crops which need a lot of water; aged and inefficient water distribution systems; very limited revenue collection for water supplies (which encourages waste); and, critically, lack of water storage capacity (dams).
Potential for conflict over water
India faces many of the same challenges as Pakistan. It is the fifth most vulnerable country in the world to climate change, and has a much bigger and growing population. India is the upper riparian state in relation to Pakistan, and has already taken advantage of this to construct new dams on its western rivers, notably on the Kishangange and Ratle. Pakistan has complained about these, arguing that they reduce its water supply. But climate change effects make India more prone to build dams and hold onto as much water as it can.
Should India do so, or otherwise withhold or divert waters away from Pakistan, this will pose an existential threat to that country. It is estimated that Punjab and Sindh, central to the agriculture sector in Pakistan, could face up to a 35% reduction in water availability in critical growing seasons. ‘Such a scenario is nothing short of a nightmare for a country whose economy and food supply are so deeply tied to these rivers’.
It should be stressed that this is unlikely in the short term as India lacks the technology, infrastructure, and storage capacity to reduce river flows to Pakistan, and could come under similar pressure itself from China, which is the upper riparian to India. But what could happen is that India stops the routine sharing of critical data — e.g. on water levels, river flow and dam operations — with Pakistan, which had been provided for under the IRWT. This, in turn, will make it much harder for Pakistan to forecast floods and drought, plan its irrigation, generate hydropower and manage its drinking water.
If India permanently withdraws from the IRWT there is no alternative mechanism to manage distribution of Indus River waters. This is where the real threat of Indo-Pakistan conflict emerges: water is basic for human survival, and the competition for ever more scarce water resources could trigger such a conflict. Certainly this could be a bigger driver than the historic territorial dispute over Kashmir. Nonetheless, the Kashmir dispute is significant in that, against such a backdrop and legacy, Indo-Pak conflict over water becomes more likely.
Dr Iffat Idris is a research fellow at the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC), International Development Department, University of Birmingham. She focuses on conflict analysis, humanitarian response, modern slavery, violent extremism and serious and organized crime (SOC), and has written extensively on Pakistan and the wider South Asia region.
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