Pakistan Is One of the World's Most Water-Stressed Countries. Here Is What That Means for Buyers Who Source Textiles From Here.

And then textile wet processing, the dyeing, finishing, and washing that transforms grey fabric into sellable product, adds another significant water demand on top of agriculture. A typical Pakistani dye house processing cotton fabric without recycling infrastructure uses somewhere between 100 and 200 liters of water per kilogram of fabric processed, according to published benchmarks from the ZDHC wastewater research. A mill running with modern water recycling and reuse systems can reduce this to 30-60 liters per kilogram. The difference is not theoretical. It's the difference between facilities that have invested in treatment and recirculation versus those that haven't.

If you source textiles from Pakistan and haven't factored water into your supply chain risk assessment, you're missing something material. Not a theoretical risk to assess once and file away. An active, present risk that affects the long-term viability of your supply chain and your ability to make credible sustainability claims about it.

What the World Resources Institute's Aqueduct data says about Pakistan's manufacturing zones

The WRI Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas is one of the most rigorous publicly available tools for assessing water risk at a geographic level. It uses satellite data, hydrological models, and ground truth information to rate water stress, seasonal variability, drought risk, flood occurrence, and water quality on a basin-by-basin basis globally.

Pakistan's major manufacturing provinces don't come out well on these metrics.

Punjab, where Lahore and Faisalabad, Pakistan's two largest textile manufacturing cities, are located, is classified under "high" baseline water stress. This means that the total freshwater withdrawal in the basin is consistently more than 40% of available supply. Above 40% withdrawal rate is the threshold that water scientists use to define "high stress," because above this level the buffer between demand and sustainable supply becomes thin enough that small perturbations, drought years, unexpected demand increases, infrastructure failures, create supply disruptions.

Sindh, where Karachi sits and where a significant share of Pakistan's cotton is grown, shows "high" to "extremely high" water stress in different sub-regions, with some areas of the lower Indus basin showing among the highest stress ratings in the WRI's global dataset.

What this means practically: these basins are operating with limited water margin. Industries drawing from these basins, textile mills among them, are drawing from a resource that's under structural pressure. This isn't a warning that things will definitely get worse. It's a recognition that the current situation has limited buffer.

The groundwater reality: what's happening beneath the surface

The WRI Aqueduct surface water stress metrics are concerning. The groundwater picture adds another layer.

Pakistan's Punjab agricultural zone relies heavily on groundwater for irrigation, drawn from tube wells that access the Indus basin aquifer system. Published research from the International Waterlogging and Salinity Research Institute and various Pakistani academic studies documents a pattern of groundwater depletion in key agricultural zones, with water tables dropping in some areas at rates of 0.5 to 1 meter per year.

Industrial groundwater use adds to agricultural pressure. Textile mills, particularly those without municipal water connections or with unreliable municipal supply, often draw their process water from private tube wells. As groundwater tables fall, the energy required to pump water from greater depths increases. The cost of water extraction rises. In some areas, water quality at greater depths degrades as shallower, cleaner aquifer layers are exhausted and deeper, more mineralized water is accessed.

For a Pakistani mill currently operating without water recycling, buying water from a declining groundwater table, the cost trajectory over the next decade goes in one direction. The operational business case for water recycling infrastructure investment, setting sustainability commitments aside entirely, becomes increasingly compelling on pure cost grounds.

The climate dimension: why the risk is growing, not stable

The water stress situation in Pakistan's manufacturing zones is not static. It's worsening under projected climate trajectories.

Pakistan's climate has already shifted measurably. The 2022 super-floods were partially driven by accelerated glacial melt from the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalayan system that feeds the Indus. The glaciers that supply the Indus River system, sometimes called the Third Pole because they represent the largest freshwater reservoir outside the polar ice caps, are losing mass at an accelerating rate under current warming trends.

This creates a counterintuitive short-term/long-term dynamic. In the near term, as glaciers melt faster, more water flows into the Indus during warm months. This is partly why extreme flood events are increasing in frequency and severity. Long-term, as glacier mass declines, the dry- season flow that agriculture and industry depend on will decrease, because less ice means less summer melt feeding rivers when monsoon rainfall isn't filling them.

The IPCC's South Asia regional assessments, including the AR6 Working Group II assessment published in 2022, project that water availability in the Indus basin will increase variability, with more extreme wet periods and potentially more severe dry periods. For supply chain planning purposes, this means more of the extreme events like 2022 (too much water, destroying crops and infrastructure) and eventual trends toward more stressed dry-season conditions.

What buyers should actually ask about water: the specific questions

Most buyers, when they engage with Pakistani suppliers on sustainability, ask about environmental certifications, perhaps about effluent treatment, occasionally about chemical management. Very few ask the water questions that would actually reveal whether a supplier is managing this risk.

Here are the questions that tell you what you need to know.

Question one: What is your water consumption per kilogram of processed fabric, and has it changed in the past three years? This question has multiple useful properties. It reveals whether the supplier measures water at all (if they can't answer with a number, they don't measure). It reveals the baseline consumption level (above 100 liters per kilogram without recycling is high; below 50 with recycling is well-managed). And it reveals the trend, whether investment in water efficiency is actually reducing consumption.

Question two: What percentage of your process water is recycled and reused? A well-invested Pakistani dye house should be achieving 60-80% or higher water recycling rates. Below 40% recycling suggests either limited or non-functional treatment and recirculation infrastructure. Zero recycling is a significant concern.

Question three: Can you share your most recent ZDHC ClearStream effluent test results? ClearStream results tell you both about discharge quality (is the effluent clean enough for ZDHC Wastewater Guidelines compliance?) and about the existence of a monitoring system. A supplier who can produce current ClearStream results has a third-party-verified record of their effluent quality. One who can't hasn't engaged with the programme. Question four: Where does your process water come from, and do you have any groundwater depletion assessment? This is a more advanced question that fewer suppliers will be able to answer quantitatively, but it's the right question to ask for advanced sustainability assessments. Whether a supplier draws from municipal supply, from private tube wells, or from a water recycling system tells you about their dependency on at-risk water sources.

Question five: What is your water recycling technology and what was the investment year? This gives you a sense of the vintage and likely efficiency of the water management infrastructure. A primary treatment and recirculation system installed in 2015 with no upgrades is in a different place than a modern ZLD plant commissioned in 2022.

The CSDDD connection: why this is a legal due diligence requirement, not just a sustainability question

The EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, in force since July 2024, explicitly covers water as an environmental dimension of the supply chain adverse impact assessment. Adverse water-related impacts, which include excessive water withdrawal from stressed water sources and discharge of pollutants to waterways, are within scope of the due diligence obligation.

This means that for international brands with CSDDD obligations, asking their Pakistani suppliers about water management is not optional. It's part of the due diligence that CSDDD requires. A brand that can demonstrate it assessed water risk in its Pakistan supply chain, understood which suppliers are operating in high-stress basins, and took proportionate measures to encourage better water management (whether through buyer-supported investment, green finance facilitation, or contractual requirements) has a defensible CSDDD position.

A brand that says "we didn't assess water risk in our Pakistan supply chain" has a disclosure gap that regulators, NGOs, and institutional investors will identify.

The positive story: water efficiency as business case

Let's shift from risk to opportunity, because there's a genuine commercial logic that makes water efficiency investment attractive to Pakistani mills independent of international buyer pressure.

Water recycling infrastructure reduces the volume of fresh water a mill needs to purchase or extract. In areas where water costs are rising because of supply pressure, every liter recycled is a liter that doesn't need to be bought. Effluent treatment that recovers heat from hot process water reduces energy costs. Chemical recovery systems that capture and reuse dye chemicals from effluent streams reduce chemical purchase costs. The published payback periods for water recycling investments in the textile sector range from 3-7 years depending on the scale and technology, and on the local water and energy cost environment. In Pakistan's context, where both water and energy costs are rising, the business case is increasingly favorable even without international buyer pressure or green finance.

Pakistani mills that invest in water efficiency in the next 2-3 years do so in a cost environment where the investment is becoming more economically rational by the year. They also do so at a point in time when international buyers and development finance institutions are willing to support those investments through supply chain sustainability programmes and concessional financing.

How international buyers can actively support supplier water management improvement

Three practical approaches international buyers have used successfully in other markets to support supplier water management improvement, applicable to Pakistan:

Multi-year sourcing commitments that provide revenue certainty for suppliers planning capital investments. A mill that has a 3-year purchase volume commitment from an EU brand can approach a Pakistani commercial bank or development finance institution for a green loan with that revenue certainty as partial security.

Technical support through industry programmes. The ZDHC Foundation has supplier training and support programmes. Industry initiatives like the Sustainable Apparel Coalition have tools and benchmarking support. Directing Pakistani suppliers to these resources costs buyers nothing and accelerates supplier capability development.

Incorporating water performance metrics into supplier scorecards. When suppliers know that their water recycling rate and ClearStream compliance status affect their allocation decisions, they have commercial incentive to invest. Making this explicit in the supplier relationship is the step many buyers haven't taken yet.

For water compliance testing including ZDHC ClearStream effluent reporting and water quality analysis, contact Tti Labs at customerservices@ttilabs.net or 111-786-001.