Government authorities are still trying to ascertain the causes of last month\u2019s spill. Abdul Rahim Baloch, the Gwadar Development Authority\u2019s deputy environment director, says fighting in the Gulf may have caused it. Tankers carrying crude oil are being attacked in the conflict between Iran, the US and Israel. Others suspect the smuggling that carries oil from Iran to Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gwadar, in the province of Balochistan, is situated near the strait of Hormuz. Around a quarter of the world\u2019s seaborne oil<\/a> was shipped through this passage prior to February, when the US and Israel began attacking Iran. But it is not just this proximity to oil that makes waters around the port \u2013 and local fishers \u2013 extremely vulnerable to ecological emergencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Local people say years of rapid development, designed to turn Gwadar into a major port, have brought displacement, flooding and environmental destruction. Fishers who once thrived on the bounties of the sea have resorted to smuggling Iranian oil through a sea route near the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2015 China and Pakistan agreed to cooperate on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an ambitious energy-import infrastructure project that would connect western China to the Indian Ocean. The aim was to bypass the potential maritime chokepoint of the strait of Malacca; Gwadar is planned as the corridor\u2019s ocean terminus and its crown jewel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first phase of the port was developed by the governments of Pakistan and China, at a cost of USD 248 million<\/a>. It was inaugurated in March 2007 and handed over to the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA), which was supposed to run it for 40 years. But in 2013, the PSA gave up Gwadar. The rights to the facility were transferred to the China Overseas Ports Holding Company Ltd, which has been operating it ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second phase, underway since 2007, focuses on developing infrastructure surrounding the port. This includes various megaprojects<\/a>, such as a now-completed coastal highway and airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this year the two governments announced<\/a> a renewed push on the CPEC, with more development for Gwadar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The chairperson of the Gwadar Port Authority, Noor ul Haq Baloch, told Dialogue Earth the authority is looking at reviving plans for a vast \u201cOil City\u201d project in the district. It would store, refine and process petroleum\u00a0products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But ever since the CPEC was announced, there have been major environmental concerns about the construction of a deep-sea port and related infrastructure at Gwadar. The city is susceptible to drought, climate change, groundwater depletion and rising sea levels, and has been experiencing<\/a> unpredictable and extreme weather events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, development has reshaped the local marine environment. Previously, a natural harbour created by a hammer-shaped peninsula served as the heart of Gwadar\u2019s fishing community. Here, fishers could cast their nets year-round, bringing in plentiful catches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The waters were so bountiful that locals proudly referred to this bay as their own Saindak and Reko Diq, equating the rich marine life to Balochistan\u2019s two famous gold and copper mines. With the deep-sea port and rapid development in and around the port town, that era is over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEnvironmental impact is always present whenever there are mega-development projects such as ports, railways, dams,\u201d says Hasan H Karrar, a China expert and associate professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. \u201cThis is irrespective of which country is financing them and where they were being built.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The key questions to ask, Karrar notes, are how those environmental impacts are assessed, how they can be mitigated, and who will be a part of the conversations about developments. Today, he says, local people have little role in these conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUltimately, we hope for a situation in which the lot of the local people is better off than it was previously and to engage them in the development process,\u201d Karrar adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Gwadar this has not been the case, he says. Many of the local people Dialogue Earth spoke to agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Gwadar, fishers socialise every day at a dhoria<\/em> along the coast \u2013 a Balochi word for a raised, open platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nearby, loading and unloading takes place at the port\u2019s three multipurpose berths for ocean-going ships, where the central fishing spot used<\/a> to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the 2000s, fishers were forced to leave the area they fished from as it fell within the port\u2019s precincts, says Rahim. The former local fisher, who did not want his real name to be published, says locals do not talk about the port publicly as they fear the ire of local authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, fishers are not allowed near the port or where they used to fish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rahim remembers going to sea to fish with his father. He says there used to be a lot to catch but that this is no longer the case. Now in his late 30s, Rahim ventures to sea to smuggle Iranian oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But displacement is not the only impact to local fishers following Gwadar port\u2019s development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another concern relates to the 2017 construction of the USD 168 million Eastbay expressway, which connects Gwadar port to the Makran coastal highway, and thus to on Karachi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gwadar\u2019s fisherfolk protested<\/a> this construction for weeks in 2018. The expressway cut off their routes to the Arabian Sea, according to Haji Khudad Wajo, a fisher and leader of the protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Authorities eventually built a concrete passageway under the road for fishers to access the sea. But some of them say it has been insufficient. \u201cIt has disturbed our mobility \u2013 it is challenging to go to the sea and fish. It is like an open jail,\u201d says fisher Rauf Baloch. (Baloch is a common local surname; the people quoted in this story are not related.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Multiple roads have been constructed<\/a> in Gwadar and its surrounding areas as part of ongoing development. Locals and some experts say they are exacerbating floods when it rains, posing problems even to those who do not need to access the sea for work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A thoroughfare known locally as the Grand Trunk road, or the GT road, is causing particular concern to the residents of Gwadar. \u201cBecause of the GT road \u2026 water does not drain into the sea and neither does it get absorbed into the ground,\u201d says Barkat Baloch, who lives in Gwadar district. \u201cIf you dig a little, water flows out. As a result, we can neither build a wall nor a house for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The situation has worsened as more development takes place in Gwadar, experts and residents told Dialogue Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During heavy rains, water used to flow from the land to the sea, says hydrologist Pazeer Ahmad. This is no longer the case. The resulting floods have displaced multiple families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cParadoxically, Gwadar\u2019s liveability depends on the absence of the rain. Each [rainy] spell threatens to sink the city further,\u201d says Ahmad. \u201cAny rainfall exceeding 40 mm, especially when it coincides with high tide, quickly raises the groundwater table and causes flooding from below the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Gwadar\u2019s fishers, the development issues come on top of the longstanding problem of competition from trawlers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman is a prominent political leader of local protests. He has complained for years against what he says is illegal trawling on the Gwadar coast that is in turn causing environmental destruction. Large commercial trawlers from neighbouring Sindh province are not supposed to fish within 12 nautical miles of the shore. He says they violate these territorial limits, bringing their destructive bottom-trawling methods into the zone. By contrast, local fishers use small boats and do not trawl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Map](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/20260715_Pakistan-Gwadar-strait-Hormuz_map_EN.jpg\")
<\/div>How Gwadar boomed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Fishers blocked from the sea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
It has disturbed our mobility \u2013 it is challenging to go to the sea and fish. It is like an open jail.<\/blockquote>Rauf Baloch, fisher <\/cite><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
![\"Aerial](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Eastbay-Expressway-of-Gwadar-port-in-Pakistan_Jiang-Chao_Xinhua_Alamy_2JB9A2Y.jpg\")
<\/div>Rising waters, rising problems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Turning to smuggling to make ends meet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n