Agriculture in Pakistan, located in arid and semi‑arid regions, is highly dependent on irrigation, with irrigation water mainly sourced from the Indus River. Severe agricultural water scarcity poses a grave threat to local food security as well as socio‑economic development. Previous studies have mostly focused on local irrigation districts or single crops, lacking quantitative analysis of the spatiotemporal evolution patterns and driving factors of agricultural water scarcity at the national scale, which hinders the coordinated management of regional water‑food‑economy systems.

Associate Professor Guo Ying of the research group led by Shen Yanjun from the Center for Agricultural Resources Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences integrated multi‑source datasets including remote sensing, meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural statistics to quantitatively analyze the spatiotemporal variations in water availability, irrigation water requirement and agricultural water scarcity index across Pakistan. Using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition method, they quantified the contributions of four major factors — climate change, runoff fluctuation, cropland expansion and cropping‑structure adjustment — to changes in agricultural water scarcity across different provinces. The results reveal that national irrigation water requirement in Pakistan increased significantly at a rate of 73 million m3/a from 1990 to 2021, with Punjab Province accounting for over 66 % of the country’s total irrigation water requirement. The dominant drivers and their contribution rates of agricultural water scarcity varied markedly among provinces: water scarcity in Balochistan was mainly driven by cropland expansion (59.6 %) and runoff fluctuation (41.6 %); Punjab was dominated by runoff fluctuation (75.4 %); Sindh was jointly affected by climatic effects (37.8 %) and cropping‑structure adjustment (29.0 %). Accordingly, the study puts forward countermeasures and suggestions including optimizing provincial‑zoned crop layout, popularizing water‑saving irrigation, and advancing water‑right and water‑price reform. Implementing these tailored optimization measures can effectively improve the utilization efficiency of agricultural water and the guarantee rate of water resources. It provides scientific support for the sustainable management of agricultural water resources in arid and semi‑arid regions worldwide confronted with similar water‑scarcity challenges.

This research achievement, entitled Changes in agriculture water scarcity and their driving factors in Pakistan, has been published in Journal of Geographical Sciences. Associate Professor Guo Ying is the first author. The research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFE0100700) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB0720403).

Paper link: https://www.geogsci.com/EN/10.1007/s11442-026-2539-0

Figure 1 Changes in annual agricultural WSI in Pakistan and its provinces (1990–2021).

Figure 2 Monthly WSI in (a) Balochistan, (b) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, (c) Punjab, and (d) Sindh of Pakistan.