By

Jaweria Abbasi

Conflict Tue 07 2026

Modernizing the Indus Waters Treaty for the Climate Change Era

The Indus water Treaty has survived three intense between India and Pakistan, but what it may not survive is the melting of glaciers.Indus water treaty signed on 19 September,1960, between Indian and Pakistan, brokered by World Bank. It was built for a different era where climate conditions and political conditions were different, it wasn’t designed to address contemporary challenges. The accelerating impact on climate change, including rising temperatures, melting glaciers and increasingly unpredictable water flows, highlights the urgent need to modernize the treaty.

Indus water originally originated from glaciers near lake Mansarovar in the Kailash mountain range of Tibet and flows northwest through the distributed Kashmir region. As a glacier-fed river system, its flow is highly dependent on seasonal snow and glacial melt. However, climate change has accelerated glacier melting and altered precipitation patterns, making river flows increasingly unpredictable. These emerging hydrological changes were not anticipated when the Indus Waters Treaty was negotiated in 1960.

There are many more challenges other than climate change which are making this treaty highly vulnerable. Which include lack of real time sharing of data hydrological data sharing between India and Pakistan, deforestation and inadequate afforestation efforts, Deforestation in the upper catchment areas of Indus River has reduced the natural ability of forest to regulate glacier melt and maintain stable river flows. Pakistan and India are both depended on this river but have never made efforts to its ecosystem There has been insufficient cooperation to prevent deforestation, promote afforestation. Poor water management particularly in Pakistan, remains a major challenge. Pakistan has limited reservoirs storage capacity, resulting in a significant amount of water flowing unused into the sea instead of being stored for agricultural, industrial, and domestic use. Reservoir capacity isn't just an efficiency question it's a matter of life and death. The floods that have repeatedly devastated Pakistan, displacing tens of millions and killing thousands, like the 2022 floods, which killed over 1,700 people and displaced over 30 million) they aren't purely acts of nature. They're also a failure of storage water that had nowhere to go except into peoples.

That’s why it’s important to add some supplementary clauses in the treaty to make it even more effective. The treaty has worked for 66 years but that does not mean it will be enough for today’s challenges. If the treaty is not updated it could put people's lives, livelihoods, and water security at risk.

Given how politically radioactive a full renegotiation of the treaty would be, the more realistic path is a supplementary framework one that sits alongside the existing treaty without touching allocation, usage rights, or sovereign control, and instead patches the specific gaps identified above. Following clauses should be added in the treaty to make it more effective and suitable for contemporary period. Firstly, there should be the Joint Climate and Ecosystem Protection Cooperation, both countries should agree to adopt a joint climate resilience approach focused on long term sustainability of the river system, including:

  Glacier monitoring and seasonal flow assessment.

·  Afforestation and reforestation programs in upper catchment and glacier adjacent areas.

·    Prevention of deforestation in critical watershed cones.

·     Promotion of climate-resilient native vegetation including the fast growing and soil- stabilizing species such as Deodar cedar, blue pine (Pinus wallichiana), and other native species, to reduce soil erosion, regulate local temperatures, enhance carbon sequestration, and maintain ecosystem balance.

·         Joint Flood forecasting and drought assessment systems

These measures aim to stabilize watershed ecosystems and indirectly support glacier sustainability, in alignment with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and relevant SDGs (Goal 13).

Secondly, Parties should agree to establish a near real time data sharing system to enhance to predictability and reduce uncertainty, including:

·         River flow level at regular intervals

·         Inflow and outflow data at major upstream points

·         Non-sensitive information on gate operations (opening/closing patterns)

·         Short-term pondage and release patterns within permitted limitsData shall be shared at mutually agreed intervals, following a flexible, condition-based approach. During normal conditions, periodic updates shall be maintained, while during periods of high variability, flood risk, or significant operational changes, the frequency of updates may increase, including near real-time sharing where feasible.This directly addresses the current gap where only general or delayed data is shared, but operational timing data is missing.And all this will be monitored by the joint technical working group as a technical extension of the existing framework under the Indus Waters Treaty, working alongside the Permanent Indus Commission.

None of these clauses redraw borders or reallocate a single cusec of water. That's the point. It's the difference between renegotiating a treaty and patching its blind spots and given the current political climate between the two countries, patching is the only version of reform with a realistic path forward. But Data and Diplomacy Aren't Enough, Pakistan Has to Fix Its Own Storage Problem

Indus water treaty would be only solving the water information and protection; it does nothing about the fact that Pakistan currently has some of the lowest water storage capacity per capita of any major river-dependent country in the world and that’s Pakistan’s internal problem it has nothing to do with India. That’s why Pakistan should be focusing on this issue that how they can effectively manage the water, by engaging with water resources engineers, hydrologist hydraulic engineers and other experts to conduct research and improve the reservoir planning and development.

The Indus Water Treaty upgradation that I have proposed is quiet modest. It suggests practical improvements rather than rewriting the entire treaty. It does not ask India to give up water it already has the right to, nor it ask Pakistan to give up any right of its water. It just focuses on the gaps that were not addressing contemporary challenges. Along with the upgradation in the treaty is also suggest that Pakistan must invest in reservoirs, dams and modern water management systems.