Climate Change and Interprovincial Water Conflicts in Pakistan: A Bibliometric Review of the Indus River Basin
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63062/trt/SG25.097Keywords:
Indus River, Water Conflict, Climate Change, Bibliometric Analysis, Systematic ReviewAbstract
This study systematically reviewed the existing literature on climate change and the Indus River water conflict between Punjab and Sindh provinces in Pakistan. We aimed to analyze how scholarly work on climate-induced water conflicts has evolved globally from 1991 to 2020 and to highlight research gaps in the context of intra-state disputes in Pakistan. Using comprehensive searches across multiple academic databases, we identified 115 relevant documents, including journal articles, reports, theses, books, and grey literature. Keywords such as climate change, water conflict, framework, and agent-based modelling guided the selection. We applied VOSviewer and NVIVO to generate bibliometric maps, co-occurrence networks, word frequency charts, hierarchy trees, and visual overlays to examine research trends and thematic clusters. Our results showed a significant increase in publications over the decades, driven by the adoption of computational analytics and complex systems modelling in climate conflict research. However, studies explicitly focusing on the Indus River conflict within Pakistan remain limited. This review underscores the need for more empirical and modelling-based research to inform policy and conflict resolution strategies for sustainable water governance under changing climatic conditions.
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