Habibullah Khatti walks on a crackling salt crust to his mother’s grave for one final prayer before he leaves his desolate island village in the Indus delta for good. The intrusion of seawater into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea, has caused farming and fishing communities to collapse. “The saltwater has surrounded us on all four sides,” Khatti told AFP from Abdullah Mirbahar village, located in the town of Kharo Chan, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the river’s mouth.
As fish stocks dwindled, the 54-year-old became a tailor, but that too became impossible as only four of the 150 households in his village remained. He described how “an eerie silence takes over the area in the evening,” with stray dogs wandering through the abandoned homes. Kharo Chan once had about 40 villages, but most have been swallowed by rising seawater. According to census data, the town’s population dropped from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023. Khatti is now preparing to move his family to Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, which is already swelling with economic migrants, including those from the Indus delta.
The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, a group advocating for fishing communities, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the delta’s coastal districts. A study published in March by the Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by a former climate change minister, estimates that over 1.2 million people have been displaced from the entire Indus delta region in the last two decades. A 2018 study by the US-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water found that the downstream flow of water into the delta has decreased by 80% since the 1950s due to irrigation canals, hydropower dams, and climate change’s impact on melting glaciers and snow. This has led to devastating seawater intrusion. Since 1990, the water’s salinity has increased by approximately 70%, making it impossible to grow crops and severely affecting shrimp and crab populations. “The delta is both sinking and shrinking,” said Muhammad Ali Anjum, a local WWF conservationist.
Beginning in Tibet, the Indus River flows through Kashmir before traversing all of Pakistan. The river and its tributaries irrigate about 80% of the country’s farmland, supporting millions of livelihoods. The delta, formed by rich sediment deposited by the river as it meets the sea, was once a great environment for farming, fishing, mangroves, and wildlife. But a 2019 government water agency study found that over 16% of fertile land has become unproductive because of encroaching seawater.
In the town of Keti Bandar, which spreads inland from the water’s edge, a white layer of salt crystals covers the ground. Boats carry in drinkable water from miles away, and villagers use donkeys to transport it home. “Who leaves their homeland willingly?” asked Haji Karam Jat, whose house was swallowed by the rising water level. He rebuilt farther inland, anticipating that more families would join him. “A person only leaves their motherland when they have no other choice,” he told AFP.
British colonial rulers were the first to change the course of the Indus River with canals and dams, followed more recently by dozens of hydropower projects. Earlier this year, several canal projects on the Indus River were halted when farmers in the low-lying riverine areas 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 its goals is to restore 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 the forests that act as a natural barrier against saltwater intrusion.
While mangroves are being restored in some coastal areas, land grabbing and residential development projects are causing clearing in other parts. Meanwhile, neighboring India poses a looming threat to the river and its delta after revoking a 1960 water treaty with Pakistan, which divides control over the Indus basin rivers. India has threatened to never reinstate the treaty and build dams upstream, which would restrict the flow of water to Pakistan, a move Pakistan has called “an act of war.”
According to climate activist Fatima Majeed, who works with the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, these communities have not only lost their homes but also a way of life deeply connected to the delta. Majeed, whose grandfather relocated their family from Kharo Chan to the outskirts of Karachi, said that women, in particular, who for generations have stitched nets and packed the day’s catches, struggle to find work after migrating to the cities. “We haven’t just lost our land, we’ve lost our culture,” she remarked.
