A Vision for Sustainable Coexistence

Azhar Rashid Khan,

The Indus River has sustained Pakistan’s civilizations for millennia, but it is not merely an economic resource — it is a living system, and its health is a direct measure of our own. The Indus River Dolphin, locally known as the Bhulan, is both an endangered species and a barometer of that health, and its fate now tests whether Pakistan can align conservation, security, and water policy behind a single goal.

A Tragedy on the River

In August 2026, a dead female Indus dolphin cub was found near Dera Ghazi Khan, inside a designated sanctuary, apparently drowned after becoming entangled in an illegal fishing net. It was a stark reminder that legal protection on paper does not guarantee protection in the water. The species has recovered to a global population of roughly 2,000, according to WWF-Pakistan — a genuine conservation success — but this death shows that enforcement and monitoring are not keeping pace with the law.

The Panjnad Sanctuary: A Genuine Milestone

In July 2026, the Punjab government established the Panjnad Indus River Dolphin Sanctuary, covering roughly 123 miles of the Indus at the historic confluence where Punjab’s five rivers meet. WWF-USA has called it a historic step: linked with the existing protected stretch in Sindh, it creates a continuous, legally protected river corridor of approximately 249 miles. Punjab is home to an estimated 660 dolphins, nearly two-thirds of them within the new sanctuary — making this corridor essential for a population long fragmented by dams and barrages. Experts expect the sanctuary to benefit not only dolphins but fish stocks and the communities who depend on the river.

Water Flows Are the Foundation

A single fishing-net death is a symptom of a larger problem: the Indus dolphin’s survival depends on continuous river flows, and those flows are under pressure from both outside and within Pakistan.

Externally, India placed the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty “in abeyance” in April 2025, following the Pahalgam attack. On August 31, 2026, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled unanimously that the treaty remains fully in force and that India had no legal grounds to suspend it. India has rejected that ruling, calling the tribunal illegitimately constituted, and maintains that the suspension stands. The dispute is therefore unresolved in practice even where international arbitration has spoken, and it underscores Pakistan’s vulnerability as a lower riparian state serving over 250 million people dependent on the Indus system.

Internally, though, Pakistan cannot let this external threat obscure its own inefficiencies. The Indus Basin Irrigation System — covering 16.85 million hectares and producing roughly 90 percent of the country’s harvests across a region home to about 74 percent of its population — loses enormous volumes of water to poor conveyance and on-farm practices. Punjab’s recent conservation program offers a template: 800 planned mini-dams in the Potohar region (adding 32,000 acre-feet of storage), lining of 2,600 kilometres of watercourses (yielding roughly 20 percent savings), and high-efficiency irrigation upgrades that have saved 18,000 acre-feet while raising yields by up to 50 percent, according to provincial irrigation authorities. These measures, replicated basin-wide, would help sustain the minimum environmental flows dolphins need.

The Three Rs: Recycle, Reuse, Rainwater Harvesting

Pakistan has barely begun to exploit rainwater harvesting, greywater reuse, and groundwater recharge as tools for river health. Survey research on farmer attitudes in Punjab and Sindh has found rainwater harvesting to be the least-adopted conservation strategy, held back less by skepticism than by limited financing, water scarcity, and variable rainfall. Closing that gap will require better policy incentives and technical support tailored to those real constraints — not just awareness campaigns.

The Ghumra Model: Unfinished Business

In 2017, following operations against riverine criminal gangs in Sukkur, I proposed the Ghumra Forest Aquatic Sanctuary model on a simple premise: conservation cannot succeed where the riverine areas are not secure. In 2018 we raised the Riverine Amphibious Police Force (RAPF), trained in diving and dolphin rescue as well as law-enforcement. It was not sustained as a permanent unit, and the security vacuum it filled soon reopened.

The Sindh Inspector General of Police has now announced a new, dedicated riverine police unit, alongside socio-economic investment — roads, clinics, schools — in cleared areas. This validates the original model, but the 2018 experience carries one clear lesson: a force that is stood up but not institutionalized will not last. The new unit needs permanent funding, joint training with Wildlife Rangers and Forest Department staff, and a mandate that explicitly includes conservation.

Making Conservation Pay

No sanctuary is sustainable unless it benefits the people who live along it. The Bank Alfalah–WWF-Pakistan partnership, backed by PKR 8.5 million, is a useful model:

• Community engagement — five community-based organizations, 35 fishers trained in data collection, five eco-tourism initiatives
• Youth outreach — 10 school nature clubs, five educational toolkits, roughly 700 students engaged
• Capacity building — 10 community members trained as eco-guides; three fishing boats converted to dolphin-watching vessels
• Cultural preservation — five community heritage and storytelling events

Separately, telecom operator Zong and WWF-Pakistan have launched a mobile Dolphin Rescue and Awareness Ambulance focused on the Guddu–Sukkur stretch, home to the largest concentration of Indus dolphins. The program aims to engage more than 1,500 fisherfolk as frontline conservation partners and run 50 awareness sessions in riverine settlements — addressing a real operational gap, since delayed response to a stranded dolphin is often fatal.

Recommendations

1. Make the riverine police unit permanent. Fund it fully, train it jointly with Wildlife Rangers and Forest Department officials, and give it a formal conservation mandate — so it doesn’t repeat the RAPF’s fade-out after 2018.
2. Give irrigation departments a dual mandate. Water delivery for agriculture and maintenance of minimum environmental flows should carry equal legal weight in both Punjab and Sindh; Sindh should adopt Punjab’s mini-dam, watercourse-lining, and high-efficiency irrigation measures.
3. Institutionalize training. A joint academy in Sukkur and Dera Ghazi Khan for police, rangers, irrigation officials, and fishers — covering water conservation, rescue operations, and sustainable tourism — would prevent today’s gains from being lost the way the 2018 initiative was.
4. Scale the community-tourism model across the full 249-mile corridor, with deliberate inclusion of women and marginalized groups in local water-management decisions, which research links to project durability.
5. Build a continuous monitoring and rescue network along the corridor, including additional mobile rescue units modeled on the Zong initiative — the Dera Ghazi Khan death shows current coverage is insufficient.

Conclusion

The Panjnad Sanctuary is a genuine achievement, but a declaration on paper did not stop a dolphin dying inside its boundaries weeks later. Turning legal protection into real protection will take permanent security forces, disciplined water conservation on both sides of the provincial border, and local communities with a direct economic stake in the river’s survival. The question is not whether the Indus dolphin can be saved — it is whether Pakistan can summon the institutional follow-through that past efforts, including my own, have lacked.

The author is former Police officer; former Director General, National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). He raised Sindh’s first riverine conservation force argues that saving the Indus dolphin now depends on securing the river, conserving its water, and giving local communities a stake in its survival.