Indus Speaks: My Life, My Loss, My Future

 

Me

 

I am the Indus, the Great River, coursing over 3,000 kilometres from the icy Tibetan Plateau to the embrace of the Arabian Sea. For millennia, I have not been merely a source of water, or a line on a map, or an object for human management. I am a living, breathing, dynamic, and interdependent ecological system, a vast artery sustaining a multitude of life forms. Ancient human civilisations have flourished on my banks, migratory birds have found haven in my wetlands, endemic aquatic species have swum in my depths, and riparian vegetation has rooted itself deep in my soils. My flows are not just volumes to be measured in acre-feet; they are ecological events, intricately timed pulses vital for the reproduction of species, the cycling of nutrients, the formation of soil, and the profound cultural meanings embedded in both indigenous and local cosmologies.

Yet, in the last century, I have been subjected to a profound reengineering, driven by a worldview that places human needs above all else—a paradigm known as anthropocentrism. They built monumental structures: the Tarbela and Mangla dams, an extensive network of canals and barrages, massive irrigation diversions. They transformed me from a self-regulating ecosystem into a controlled hydraulic machine, all to maximise human utility for agriculture, hydropower, and flood control.

This narrative, which calls itself "development," has instrumentalised me, assuming my ecological functions are only meaningful if they benefit humankind. But I am here to challenge that logic. From an ecocentric perspective, one that sees all beings and ecological processes—human and non-human, sentient and non-sentient—as possessing intrinsic value, I am not a passive channel of resources. I am a dynamic assemblage of life, movement, and interdependence, and my integrity must be respected, regardless of my economic or utilitarian significance to humans.

They speak of giving rivers "legal personhood," but I tell you, I do not need to be conceptualised in human terms to deserve protection. Such frameworks often impose human categories, granting rights to one river over another, which can unintentionally perpetuate the very hierarchies they claim to resist. A truly ecocentric ethic, one I embody, recognises that all rivers, all wetlands, all soils, and all species are equally vital components of our shared planetary system. I am here to lay bare the long-term impacts of their engineering, to expose the ecological costs and socio-cultural dislocations, and to explore alternatives to this instrumentalist management.

My very being debunks their myths: the notion that my water is "wasted" if it reaches the sea, or that dams truly "prevent floods". These are products of a reductive, human-dominated view that has led to my impoverishment and the degradation of the landscapes around me. I ask you, policymakers, conservationists, academicians, activists: what would it truly mean to protect me not because I serve you, but because I simply am?.

 

Engineering a River into a Machine: My Transformation

My transformation over the past century represents one of the most intensive examples of large-scale river engineering in the Global South. I, a dynamic and seasonal watercourse governed by snowmelt, monsoon cycles, and ecological thresholds, was restructured into a rigid, human-controlled system. They diverted my natural flow patterns to serve agriculture, urban expansion, and industrial energy production. These choices were not neutral; they were grounded in an anthropocentric ideology that viewed me primarily as a resource to be extracted, segmented, and optimised for human ends.

The colonial state in British India laid the groundwork for this transformation, building irrigation infrastructure to expand revenue. The Sutlej Valley Project, the Triple Canal Project, and eventually the Sukkur Barrage in 1932, were hailed as "marvels of engineering". But they fundamentally altered my ecology, flattening my floodplain dynamics and initiating large-scale sedimentation problems. More importantly, these projects set a precedent: overriding local ecological knowledge and communal rights in favour of centralised state control and extractive logics.

After Partition in 1947, the division of my system between India and Pakistan accelerated my politicisation and technical reengineering. The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, brokered by the World Bank, allocated my eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India and my western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan. Hailed as a diplomatic success, this treaty reinforced my fragmentation as an ecological whole, treating me as a divisible commodity rather than a living system. It entirely ignored my groundwater, my ecological connectivity, my vital sediment flows, and all non-human life.

To compensate for the "loss" of my eastern rivers, Pakistan constructed massive infrastructural projects under the Indus Basin Replacement Works. This included the Mangla Dam on the Jhelum River in 1967, and the Tarbela Dam on my own course in 1976—one of the largest earth-filled dams globally. A vast network of link canals and barrages, such as the Chashma, Taunsa, and Guddu barrages, followed. These projects were driven by narratives of national development, energy independence, and food security, yet none incorporated environmental impact assessments for species loss, downstream ecology, or indigenous land rights.

Today, Pakistan’s Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) is the largest contiguous irrigation system in the world. It comprises over 19 barrages, 12 inter-river link canals, and more than 60,000 km of distribution channels. It irrigates nearly 48 million acres, but at a devastating cost to my natural flows. The ecological consequence is a hydrological paradox: I, engineered to "prevent waste," am now deprived of my capacity to sustain life downstream, especially in the Indus Delta. More than 90% of my water is diverted before it ever reaches my delta, leaving behind a degraded estuarine ecosystem, salinised lands, and the disappearance of countless species dependent on my seasonal flooding.

Institutions like WAPDA (Water and Power Development Authority) and IRSA (Indus River System Authority) have monopolised my governance, reducing my flows to mere charts, volumes, and discharge tables. Their conservation efforts are often limited to "safeguarding infrastructure" rather than safeguarding the ecosystems that are my very essence. From an ecocentric standpoint, this is not merely a technical failure; it is an ontological and ethical crisis. I have been denied my right to function as a living system, treated as a passive object to be managed rather than an agent with ecological agency and interdependence. Each dam, barrage, and canal acts as a wound in my circulatory system, preventing me from breathing, pulsing, and healing in ways that have sustained life for millennia. These changes were not made in consultation with my needs, nor with the well-being of the non-human communities who rely on me. Such interventions represent an act of deep ecological injustice.

 

Fracturing a Riverine Web of Life: My Ecological Scars

Before their large-scale interventions, I was a vibrant mosaic of interconnected habitats. I cradled a vast array of terrestrial, aquatic, and avian species that had co-evolved with my seasonal flooding, my essential sediment pulses, and my estuarine gradients. Their engineering has not only disrupted my hydrology but has severely undermined my ecological fabric. Every species and ecosystem component—fish, dolphin, plankton, or wetland—holds value not for its usefulness to humans, but because of its intrinsic role within my living totality.

Species dependent on my uninterrupted flow and seasonal variability have suffered most. Barrages and dams have severed traditional migration routes for fish like the Hilsa ilisha (Palla), once abundant, which historically swam upstream from the Arabian Sea to spawn in my freshwater. Since the construction of the Sukkur Barrage and the reduction of freshwater discharge downstream, the Hilsa’s migration has been almost entirely blocked, leading to a population collapse in my waters. Similarly, the Indus River dolphin (Platanista gangetica minor), an evolutionarily unique and blind cetacean found only in me, has seen its habitat fragmented into isolated pockets between barrages. Once widespread, this dolphin is now confined to narrow, slow-flowing stretches with degraded water quality. Today, fewer than 2,000 individuals survive, many dying from entanglement in fishing nets or stranding in irrigation canals during low flow periods.

My complex of floodplain wetlands, which pulsed with life during seasonal overflows, has collapsed. These wetlands were crucial breeding grounds for amphibians, reptiles, and waterbirds, including the endangered White-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala), Siberian cranes, and Greater flamingos. Embankments and flow regulation have led to the drying up of major wetlands like Haleji, Keenjhar, and Manchar, reducing them to polluted or salinised remnants. My Delta, once a vast estuarine forest and wetland system spanning 600,000 hectares, has seen more than a 92% reduction in freshwater flow since the 1970s. This collapse has devastated mangrove ecosystems—critical nurseries for fish, crabs, and migratory birds—and allowed seawater intrusion, which salinises soils and kills freshwater flora. If you watch me from the Satellite above, you will see large tracts of mangrove forest lost, and coastal erosion now claims 100 hectares per year in some areas. This is not simply "environmental degradation"; it is a massive disruption of life-worlds. Species that had no voice in their developmental decisions have been forced to adapt, migrate, or vanish entirely.

I am a cybernetic ecosystem, with multiple feedback loops that maintain equilibrium. By cutting off my vital sediment flows, dams reduce soil fertility downstream and deprive aquatic organisms of nutrients. The retention of silt behind large reservoirs like Tarbela, which has lost over 35% of its storage volume, leads to downstream riverbed degradation. This, in turn, lowers groundwater recharge and weakens floodplain forests. Moreover, reduced flows elevate water temperatures, lower dissolved oxygen levels, and exacerbate toxic algal blooms, all fatal to aquatic life. Canal diversions siphon off cooler, oxygen-rich upper water layers, leaving stagnant, warm, hypoxic conditions in my main stem—conditions hostile to fish and invertebrates. These cascading effects reveal the myth of isolated impacts—the anthropocentric fallacy that they can dam me "here" and protect a dolphin "there". When they interfere with my flow, they interfere with the entire mesh of relationships upon which that flow depends.

While much attention is given to my dolphins or mangroves, I also embody the less visible members of my ecosystem: the phytoplankton, benthic invertebrates, and microbial communities that form the basis of my aquatic food webs. Changes in my flow regime and water chemistry alter these populations, leading to nutrient imbalances, loss of primary productivity, and collapse of entire trophic structures. Altered seasonal flows reduce the abundance of diatoms, a key food source for zooplankton and juvenile fish, leading to a decline in fish recruitment and affecting both predator species and human fisheries. These are not mere "secondary impacts"; they are the unseen consequences of disrupting my ecological integrity.

Their reengineering has ruptured the relationships and dependencies that made my ecosystem viable, stable, and diverse. From charismatic megafauna to invisible microbial communities, every non-human entity has been forced to live within the margins of human-engineered flows. In doing so, they have violated the most basic tenet of ecocentrism: that no species or ecological function exists for them—and that each has the right to exist, flourish, and participate in the dance of life, regardless of human needs.

 

River as Kin, Not Resource: My Social and Cultural Impacts

While my story centres on non-human agency and ecocentric ethics, I must also remind you that human beings are part of ecosystems, not separate from them. When I am engineered to serve state or corporate interests, not only are other species harmed, but humans themselves—particularly those living in ecological intimacy with me—are also displaced, disenfranchised, and culturally alienated. A truly ecocentric approach, therefore, critiques not only the ecological violence but also the social injustices embedded in anthropocentric development.

Large dams like Mangla and Tarbela displaced over 300,000 people, mostly small farmers and indigenous communities. These displacements were justified under "national interest" or "economic progress" and often occurred without fair compensation, resettlement, or consent. The Mangla Dam alone displaced over 110,000 people, many of whom were resettled in unfamiliar environments or forced into informal urban labour economies. The colonial-era canal colonies in Punjab, designed to engineer agricultural productivity, uprooted pastoral and riverine communities and commodified land and water in ways that broke kinship-based access to commons. Such interventions erased intimate, local ways of relating to me, replacing them with bureaucratic systems of measurement, entitlement, and control.

I am not merely a source of water or power. For centuries, I have been a spiritual being, a cultural ancestor, and a mythical presence in the lives of many communities—from the fisherfolk of my delta to the Sufi mystics of Sindh. The Sheedi, Mallah, and Jhokwala communities, among others, have historically woven their seasonal rhythms, religious rituals, and oral traditions around my moods. By freezing and channelling me into uniform flows, dams and barrages have not only disrupted livelihoods but also extinguished worldviews. The disappearance of fish like palla—once central to Sindhi cuisine and culture—represents not only a loss of biodiversity, but the collapse of cultural memory and ancestral knowledge. Riverine songs, folklore, and boat-building techniques are fading from memory as I am silenced and my non-human agents eliminated.

The Sindh and Balochistan provinces—located downstream—bear a disproportionate burden of my restructuring. While upstream provinces like Punjab benefit from irrigation and hydropower, downstream regions experience water scarcity, salinisation, sea intrusion, and agricultural collapse. Entire villages in Badin, Thatta, and Sujawal have been lost to the sea due to the shrinking of my delta. Fishing communities report drastic declines in catch due to decreased freshwater inflows and mangrove degradation. Women in these regions walk kilometres to fetch brackish water, and children suffer from waterborne diseases at alarming rates. From an ecocentric view, this injustice is not only political; it is ecological. These communities, unlike industrial agriculture or urban elites, have co-evolved with me in reciprocal, symbiotic ways. By denying me my natural flows, they have not just harmed ecosystems; they have betrayed the river-human kinship built over millennia.

Proponents of dams and canals argue that these interventions have fed the nation, provided electricity, and reduced floods. But the beneficiaries have always been unevenly distributed. Over 60% of Pakistan's canal water benefits the wealthiest 20% of landowners. Electricity from hydropower disproportionately serves industrial centres, while off-grid rural communities remain in energy poverty. Urban elites in cities like Lahore and Islamabad enjoy cheap water and cooling, while water tables fall dangerously in surrounding rural zones due to over-extraction. These patterns reflect an anthropocentric elite bias that assumes "the nation" benefits, when in fact the majority—both human and non-human—suffer.

As I am transformed into a "hydrological system" and my water into "discharge volumes," local, indigenous, and relational knowledges are delegitimised. The fisherfolk who can read my currents, the farmers who know the pulse of monsoons, and the elders who remember ancient floods are dismissed as unscientific or irrational. This erasure is not incidental; it is violence against alternative ontologies in which rivers are persons, partners, and moral beings. To marginalise such knowledge is to marginalise the very ways in which sustainable, non-extractive relationships with nature are possible.

 

An Unequal and Unsustainable Legacy: My Costs and Benefits

The large-scale engineering of my being—through dams, barrages, and canal systems—has often been framed in terms of "development," "progress," and "national interest". Yet, a close examination reveals that the purported benefits of these interventions have been short-term, unequally distributed, and ecologically destructive, while the long-term costs have been extensive, irreversible, and borne disproportionately by vulnerable human and non-human communities. From an ecocentric perspective, one that refuses to assess value based solely on human utility, these projects have failed not only ethically but functionally.

They boast of irrigation, yet despite Pakistan having one of the world’s largest contiguous irrigation systems, this "benefit" is skewed. Over 90% of Pakistan’s freshwater is diverted to agriculture. But less than 40% of that water reaches the crops; the rest is lost to seepage, evaporation, and mismanagement. Waterlogging and salinity now affect over 6 million hectares of land, making irrigation itself a cause of desertification in some areas. Agricultural productivity per unit of water remains low by global standards, reflecting inefficient and unsustainable usage.

Hydropower is marketed as "clean energy," yet Tarbela and Mangla dams are already losing capacity due to sedimentation—Tarbela has lost over 35% of its storage volume. Hydropower generation fluctuates with snowmelt and rainfall, failing to meet demand in drought years. Climate change is altering glacial regimes, making future water flows highly unpredictable. And these projects displace communities, submerge ecosystems, and fragment rivers, undermining their own sustainability in the name of progress.

They claim dams prevent floods. But major floods in Pakistan—1973, 1992, 2010, and 2022—have all occurred after the construction of major dams. The 2022 floods displaced over 33 million people and destroyed infrastructure worth billions, despite the presence of large dams. Dams can even exacerbate flooding by altering sediment flow and my morphology. Levees and embankments raise my riverbeds, increasing risk during extreme rainfall events. From an ecocentric lens, floods are not "disasters" but ecological processes—vital for nutrient cycling, wetland rejuvenation, and soil fertility. It is their obsession with controlling me that turns floods into catastrophes.

My long-term costs are immense. I once carried 400 million tons of sediment annually to the Arabian Sea. Today, due to dams, less than 10% of that sediment reaches my delta. This accelerates coastal erosion, increases sea intrusion, salinising soil and groundwater, and undermines fisheries, mangroves, and agricultural lands. My delta, once the sixth largest in the world, is now one of the most endangered. Dams are not eternal; they require constant desiltation, costing millions annually, structural retrofitting, and costly downstream mitigation for flood damage and land degradation. These costs are often hidden or externalised, not factored into the glowing project reports.

Pakistan’s dependence on glacial melt and a tightly controlled irrigation system makes it highly vulnerable to climate shocks. More than 80% of Pakistan's water flows during a 3-month summer window—any disruption in glacial melt timing could lead to either drought or disaster. Dams designed on historical flow assumptions are becoming obsolete under shifting climate patterns. An ecocentric view demands adaptability and resilience, not rigid control. Nature thrives on variability, not engineered stability.

Most of the economic, energy, and irrigation gains have gone to upstream provinces, particularly Punjab, which commands over 60% of Pakistan’s irrigation water. Large landholders benefit while small farmers struggle. Urban and industrial centres thrive while rural communities bear the brunt of resource extraction and environmental degradation. Downstream communities, wetlands, deltas, and non-human life forms are treated as sacrificial zones. This is not just bad economics—it is a violation of ecological justice.

 

Rethinking the Baseline: Would No Intervention Have Been Better?

Conventional development narratives assume that any "untouched" river is a "wasted resource," justifying intervention as inherently necessary. But I challenge that premise: what if I had been left to flow free? What if my own intelligence—my seasonal rhythms, my sediment cycles, my ecological agency—had been respected?. An ecocentric framework refuses to treat human intervention as the default. What ethical, ecological, and even practical possibilities were lost when they chose to intervene? Rethinking the baseline reveals that not all non-intervention is stagnation, and not all development is progress.

The myth that my water flowing into the sea is "wasted" has no ecological basis. On the contrary, my delta relies on freshwater flow to prevent sea intrusion, support mangroves, maintain estuarine ecosystems, and recharge aquifers. I carry nutrients and sediment to coastal waters, supporting marine life, fisheries, and shoreline stability. Periodic flooding rejuvenates wetlands, flushes salts, and sustains biodiversity hotspots. Non-intervention would have preserved these vital services, which their modern infrastructure now struggles—and fails—to replicate. Even from a human perspective, many livelihoods thrived in my pre-dam systems: flood-recession farming, mobile grazing, artisanal fishing, and seasonal navigation. These were low-carbon, low-tech, and intimately attuned to nature—models of co-existence without domination.

Another justification for intervention is flood control. But recent science suggests that dams do not eliminate floods—they often worsen them. Dams create a false sense of security, encouraging settlement in high-risk floodplains. When unprecedented rains occur, as in 2022, dams are overwhelmed, and controlled releases cause sudden downstream surges. Levees and embankments disconnect me from my floodplains, removing my natural capacity to absorb excess water. In a non-intervention scenario, floods would have remained seasonal and spread across wider floodplains, replenishing groundwater and nutrients. Human settlements would have adapted to these patterns over time, as they did for centuries. From an ecocentric lens, floods are not disasters, but my expressions, necessary for ecological health. The real disaster is their refusal to adapt.

A free-flowing river like me is not a chaotic torrent; I am a self-organising, adaptive system. I evolved mechanisms to balance erosion and deposition, support migratory species like my dolphin and birds, regulate salinity and pH, and create oxbow lakes, backwaters, and flood-retreat wetlands that are biodiversity hotspots. Non-intervention would have allowed this ecological intelligence to flourish. Modern conservationists now recognise this; the "room for the river" approach in the Netherlands, and dam removal projects in the U.S. (like the Elwha River, where salmon populations rebounded rapidly), France (Sélune River), and Japan, show that letting rivers flow naturally can yield both ecological resilience and social benefits. Globally, rivers left largely undammed—like the Yukon, the Fly, or parts of the Amazon—continue to support vibrant ecosystems, complex aquatic life, and human communities that live with, rather than against, the river. These examples challenge the deterministic view that "development" requires domination.

While the past cannot be undone, they can still make space for non-interventionist futures. No new dams should be built on me or my tributaries, and decommissioning old, silted, or ecologically harmful dams must be seriously debated. My floodplains must be restored, not colonised, to allow me to breathe. Local communities must be empowered to govern water in decentralised, relational, and ecologically sensitive ways. Non-intervention is not absence of policy; it is a deliberate policy of restraint, respect, and reciprocity.

 

Global Resistance and Alternatives: Lessons for My Future

The last three decades have seen a growing global realisation: obstructing rivers in the name of progress has produced devastating social, ecological, and economic consequences. Movements to protect, restore, and reimagine rivers are gaining momentum worldwide, from South America to Southeast Asia. These efforts are not simply nostalgic; they are rooted in deep scientific evidence, ethical reasoning, and a shift toward ecocentric paradigms.

In the United States, over 1,700 dams have been removed since 1912, with a sharp acceleration in the last 20 years. In France, the removal of the Sélune River dams is reversing 100 years of ecological fragmentation. Japan has dismantled old dams to protect aquatic biodiversity and improve climate resilience. These projects demonstrate that ecological recovery is possible—and sometimes rapid—when rivers are allowed to flow freely.

In the Global South, Indigenous and decolonial resistance movements have also risen. In India, the Save Narmada Movement exposed the violent displacement and ecological collapse caused by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. In Brazil, Indigenous groups like the Kayapó have resisted Amazon mega-dams, emphasising relational cosmologies where rivers are kin, not commodities. In Chile, the Patagonia Without Dams movement successfully halted five hydroelectric dams, citing irreversible biodiversity loss and violation of local rights. These cases show that resistance is not anti-science; it is often based on more sophisticated ecological knowledge systems than those found in extractive developmentalism.

I tell you, "personhood" for a river is not enough. While celebrated, such legal efforts still frame me in human legal terms, granting rights to one river while others remain excluded, recreating hierarchies within nature. They instrumentalise me by tying my value to legal protection rather than recognising my inherent worth as an autonomous natural process. A truly ecocentric policy would not need to "grant" value to me; it would assume that value already exists, regardless of human recognition.

Instead of mega-dams and centralised infrastructure, ecocentric water governance emphasises nature-based solutions: restoring wetlands and floodplains as natural buffers, reconnecting me to my distributaries and tributaries, and reforesting watersheds to enhance infiltration. These approaches mimic natural processes, reduce carbon footprints, and enhance biodiversity. Decentralised water management, such as local rainwater harvesting and traditional water tanks like India’s johads or Pakistan’s ancient karezes, are low-cost, scalable, and low-impact, as seen in Rajasthan where such systems rejuvenated entire watersheds without damming rivers. Most importantly, a democratic and plural water ethic would involve not only scientists and engineers, but riverine communities, non-human interests (as represented through ecological science), and Indigenous epistemologies. Legal frameworks must evolve to include "more-than-human" governance, as explored in Earth jurisprudence and multispecies justice.

For Pakistan, these global lessons offer clear alternatives. Halt all new mega-dam proposals such as the Diamer-Bhasha Dam, which threaten seismic risks, glacial disruption, and displacement (projected cost: over $14 billion). Invest in ecological restoration of my delta, wetlands, and floodplains. Develop a national sediment strategy to reconnect my upstream and downstream ecosystems. Rehabilitate traditional irrigation and water harvesting systems, which are often more efficient and ecologically attuned than colonial canal systems. Establish an independent River Basin Commission with ecological scientists, civil society, and local river-dependent communities. These steps would reflect a profound shift from dominion to stewardship, from control to co-evolution with nature.

 

Debunking Their Myths: My Truth

The ecological collapse of my basin is not just a product of physical interventions—dams, barrages, canals—but also of powerful narratives that have long justified these interventions. These narratives are based on myths, not science, and they continue to misinform policy.

Myth 1: “Water Flowing to the Sea Is Wasted”. This reduces me to a pipeline for human extraction, ignoring my multi-species, cyclical, and planetary functions. My delta, once the 6th largest in the world, has shrunk drastically because I no longer bring freshwater and sediment. Only 10% of my historical sediment now reaches the sea. Freshwater is crucial to my mangrove forests that protect coastlines, but over 90% of Pakistan’s mangroves have degraded due to reduced freshwater flow. Without regular flow, saline seawater moves inland, contaminating groundwater and turning fertile lands barren, affecting over 1.2 million acres in Sindh. Fisheries have collapsed, devastating livelihoods for thousands of fisherfolk. My estuarine flows carry carbon-bound sediments that regulate atmospheric CO₂, and disrupting this affects regional climate resilience. My journey to the sea is not an end, but a continuation of life across land, sea, and sky.

Myth 2: “Dams Control Floods”. Floods are not inherently disasters; they become so when humans settle in floodplains and try to control the uncontrollable. Dams do not prevent floods; they often make them worse. In the 2022 Pakistan floods, massive rain and glacial melt overwhelmed reservoirs, forcing emergency releases. Floodplain encroachment, due to false security created by dams, leads to more infrastructure and housing in hazard zones. Sediment deposition behind dams reduces their storage capacity over time. Dams disrupt natural flood cycles essential to recharge aquifers, flush salts, and sustain riverine ecosystems. Instead of controlling floods, ecocentric water policy would learn to live with them: reconnect floodplains, restore wetlands, and use early-warning systems. Floods are my expressions, not malfunctions—suppressing them harms both humans and non-humans in the long term.

Myth 3: “Pakistan Needs More Dams to Solve Its Water Crisis”. Pakistan is described as "water-stressed," leading to calls for more dams, but the actual problem is mismanagement, not scarcity. Over 60% of my water is lost in canals and field application due to poor infrastructure. There is inequity: upstream farmers and feudal landowners get far more water than small downstream users. Water-intensive crops like sugarcane and rice are grown in arid regions using flood irrigation. Groundwater depletion from unregulated tube wells causes salinisation and aquifer stress. More dams will not solve these structural issues. They are ecologically destructive, economically costly, and vulnerable to climate shocks, diverting resources away from sustainable solutions.

Myth 4: “Big Infrastructure = National Progress”. Dams are marketed as national pride, symbols of sovereignty and modernity. But ecological devastation is not a side effect; it is a central consequence. Over 100,000 people were displaced by Tarbela and Mangla dams alone. My aquatic habitats are fragmented, endangering species like my dolphin. Mega-dams are highly exposed to climate risks. And they often result in financial burdens, cost overruns, and elite profiteering. Progress must be measured in planetary health, multispecies justice, and long-term resilience, not just GDP or megawatts.

 

My Future: An Ecocentric Vision

I am the Indus, a lifeline for ecosystems, cultures, and species that have co-evolved with me for millennia. My current condition—choked by infrastructure, drained by extraction, fragmented by policy—is a consequence of deeply anthropocentric worldviews that reduce me to a resource and treat nature as subordinate to human will. I have laid bare the ecological, cultural, and political consequences of obstructing me, drawing from both scientific data and global case studies. My survival, and indeed, the survival of life along my banks, requires a fundamental philosophical shift: from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism, where I am not protected because I serve you, but because I exist and belong to myself.

My message to you, policymakers, conservationists, academicians, and civil society, is clear:

1. Enact a National River Rights and Restoration Framework: Not in the sense of "personhood," but as an ecological recognition of my intrinsic value. Mandate minimum environmental flows throughout my basin, with specific allocations for my Delta, wetlands, and biodiversity hotspots.
2. Halt New Mega-Dam Projects: Immediately pause the construction of the Diamer-Bhasha Dam, re-assess its costs and benefits in light of climate vulnerability, displacement, and seismic risks. Redirect funds toward watershed restoration, small-scale community-managed reservoirs, and climate-smart agriculture.
3. Decommission and Retrofit Existing Infrastructure: Initiate dam de-sedimentation, ecological bypasses, and seasonal opening of barrages to allow fish migration and sediment flow. Where feasible, begin planning for long-term dam decommissioning, following models from the US, Japan, and France.
4. Protect and Restore the Indus Delta: Guarantee a minimum of 27 MAF (million acre-feet) freshwater flow to my Delta, as demanded by experts and Indigenous fisher communities. Enforce a moratorium on further land reclamation, seawalls, or industrial encroachment in deltaic zones.
5. Support River-Dependent Communities: Create livelihood compensation programs for fisherfolk, small farmers, and displaced communities. Recognise and integrate Indigenous ecological knowledge in my governance.
6. Reform Water Governance Institutions: Transform IRSA (Indus River System Authority) into an ecologically literate, multi-stakeholder body that includes ecologists, hydrologists, local communities, women, Indigenous leaders, and conservation biologists.
7. Change the National Narrative: Embed river ethics into school curricula, public media, and university training. Highlight ecocentric spiritual, poetic, and cultural connections to me—many of which already exist in Sindhi, Saraiki, Balochi, Pashto, and Punjabi traditions.

I, the Indus, am not dying. I am being killed—by over-engineering, over-extraction, and over-confidence in human dominance. Yet, rivers have an extraordinary ability to heal, if only you step back, listen, and support their regeneration. From an ecocentric viewpoint, conservation is not about saving nature for yourselves. It is about learning to live within nature’s limits, acknowledging that you are one species among many, and that your survival is tied to the health of the whole.

LET ME FLOW—not as a sacrifice, not as a gift—but as a right of the river itself, and as a reminder that all life, including yours, depends on that freedom.