Before leaving his drought-stricken island village, Habibullah Khatti went to bid a final farewell at his mother’s grave, where layers of salt cracked beneath his feet.
In the southern part of the country, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea, the intrusion of seawater into the delta has brought devastation to farming and fishing communities.
“Salty water has surrounded us from all sides,” said Khatti from the village of Abdullah Mirbahar in the town of Kharo Chan, where the river flows into the sea.
After fish stocks declined, 54-year-old Khatti began working as a tailor, but that too became impossible when only four out of the original 150 households remained in the village.
“In the evenings, a dreadful silence takes over this area,” he said, as stray dogs roamed among the abandoned wooden and bamboo houses.
Kharo Chan was once made up of nearly 40 villages, but most of them have now disappeared beneath the rising seawater.
According to census data, the town’s population has dropped from 26,000 in 1981 to just 11,000 in 2023.
Khatti is preparing to move his family to Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and a hub for economic migrants, including those from the Indus Delta.
The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, an organization that advocates for fishing communities, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the delta’s coastal districts.
However, a study published in March by the Jinnah Institute — a think tank led by a former climate change minister — estimates that more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the greater Indus Delta region over the past two decades.
According to a 2018 study by the US–Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water, water flow to the delta has decreased by 80% since the 1950s due to irrigation canals, hydroelectric dams, and the impacts of climate change on glacier and snowmelt.
This has led to the destructive intrusion of seawater. Since the 1990s, salinity levels have increased by nearly 70%, making farming nearly impossible and severely affecting populations of fish and shrimp.
“The delta is sinking and shrinking,” said local WWF conservationist Muhammad Ali Anjum.
No Other Option Left
Originating in Tibet, the Indus River flows through the disputed region of Kashmir before traversing the entire length of Pakistan.
This river, along with its tributaries, irrigates nearly 80 percent of the country’s agricultural land and supports the livelihoods of millions of people.
Where it meets the sea, the nutrient-rich sediment deposited by the river once formed a fertile delta — ideal for farming, fishing, mangrove forests, and wildlife. However, a 2019 study by the national water agency found that over 16 percent of this fertile land has become barren due to the intrusion of seawater.
A white layer of salt crystals covers the ground in Keti Bandar, a coastal town stretching inland from the water’s edge.
Boats transport drinking water from miles away, and villagers carry it to their homes using donkeys.
“Who leaves their homeland willingly?” asked Haji Karam Jat, whose home was swallowed by the rising water levels.
Expecting more families to join him, he rebuilt inland. “A person only leaves their homeland when they have no other choice,” he said.
A Way of Life
The British colonial rulers were the first to alter the course of the Indus River through canals and dams. Since then, dozens of new hydroelectric projects have followed.
Earlier this year, several military-led canal projects on the Indus River were halted after farmers in the lower river region of Sindh province protested.
To combat the degradation of the Indus River Basin, the government and the United Nations launched the “Living Indus Initiative” in 2021.
One of the interventions focuses on restoring the delta by addressing soil salinity and protecting local agriculture and ecosystems.
The Sindh government is also running its own mangrove restoration project, aiming to revive forests that serve as natural barriers against saline water intrusion.
While mangroves have been successfully restored in some coastal areas, land grabbing and residential development projects have encouraged deforestation in others.
Meanwhile, after Pakistan abrogated the 1960 water treaty that divided control over the rivers in the Indus Basin, neighboring India has posed a threat to the river and its delta.
India has curtailed water flow to Pakistan, threatened never to restore the treaty, and warned of constructing dams in the upper reaches. Pakistan has called this an act of “war.”
Fatima Majid, a climate activist working with the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, said communities have lost their way of life tightly connected to the delta along with their homes.
She explained that women, who for generations have mended nets and spent their days packing fish, now struggle to find work after relocating to cities. Her grandfather had relocated the family from Kharo Chan to the outskirts of Karachi.
“We have not only lost our land, but we have also lost our culture,” she said.
