AbstractStudy region Kuchlagh, Balochistan Province, Pakistan. Study focus The depletion of groundwater is a specter presented for many parts of the world that rely on the unmanaged use of groundwater. This article describes how the alluvial aquifer in Kuchlagh was exhausted after three decades of intensive use from more than three hundred agricultural wells and how the water users gradually adapted to it. Intense and unsustainable resource use is often expected to lead to conflict or cooperation. However, in Kuchlagh overuse did not lead to conflict nor did it trigger a process of cooperation or the use of efficient irrigation methods or the adaptation of local groundwater recharge measures. The situation is best described as a ‘socio-institutional void’ in which at no point in time action is taken, whereas at the same time the resource is gradually destroyed. New hydrological insights for the region In Kuchlagh the loss of opportunities in high value horticulture were cushioned by emerging urban employment, by developing agriculture in other parts of the Province or by simply ‘chasing the water table deeper’, i.e. investment in pumping from the hard rock layers underneath the alluvial aquifer. This suggests that if groundwater depletion occurs in a single isolated place it may not necessarily lead to human disaster or trigger a turn-around as the loss of resources may be compensated by other intervening opportunities.
