World Environment Day 2010: Cause for Pause or Celebration in Pakistan?

So another World Environment Day has come and gone. Doubtless, our environmental managers at the federal and provincial Environmental Protection Agencies would have organised some workshops and/or walks. Commitment to putting a stop to environmental degradation and to achieve all the targets contained in the National Environmental Policy (yes, we have one) would have been routinely expressed, sans conviction and without any explanation of how these commitments would move off the pages of policy documents and transform into tangible results. A profound sense of deja vu hits one at these events. Same promises, different faces, same frustration at lack of outcomes despite considerable inputs.

There may be even greater cause for alarm this year.

First, a few days before World Earth Day, the provincial government of Punjab announced, quite shamelessly and with great fanfare, that it had decided to allot more than 30,000 acres of forest land to 'jobless youth' (no doubt a euphimism for political cronies) for agricultural use, along with seed money (pardon the pun) of Rs.900,000 each. Amendments in the Forest Act 1927 were made to enable this plan because the British-enacted legislation prohibited conversion or use of forest land for any other purpose. And all this happens in the background of warnings by experts about the alarming rate of deforestation in the country (second worst in the world according to one source) and the fact that more than 1.44m of agriculture land is lying unutilised in Punjab.

Second, the Pakistan Economic Survey 2009-2010 released yesterday paints a dim picture of, amongst other things, the state of environmental management in the country. Consider this: only 44% of the population has access to sanitation facilities; the level of particulate matters in major cities is nearly 4 times higher than safe limits (see Figure 1); 40% of all deaths and 60% of those of children are related to water borne diseases with only four cities (Karachi, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Islamabad) equipped with water treatment plants, all workin under capacity and only the one in Islamabad meeting the National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS); 92% of the industrial wastewater is dumped untreated into surface water resources like canals, rivers etc. Depressing is too mild a word to encapsulate the enormity of challenges.

And what of the industrial and corporate sector? Industries in Pakistan consume 23% of total water available and discharge around 9000 million gallons of wastewater from industrial activity into water bodies in Punjab and Karachi. Untreated. Daily. Nearly 70% of biological load is generated by textile and beverage industry with other notable (and habitual) partners in crime being the textile, tannery, paper and pulp.

Several positive initatives have emerged and often spearheaded from or facilitated by the public sector: the initiative to raise environmental awareness in schools, promotion of the use of CNG (Pakistan is the world's largest consumer of CNG according to the International Association of Natural Gas Vehicles, with 2.4m CNG-fueled vehicles as of the start of 2010) and moves for collaborative efforts to combat industrial pollution, such as the Effluent Treatment Plant in Korangi industrial area at Karachi, established at a cost of Rs500 million by a consortium of the government of Pakistan, the embassy of Netherlands, and Karachi’s district governments in addition to the Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA); even the controversial amendment by the Punjab government in the Forest Act 1927 referred to above has a silver lining in the form of enhancing the lefine for various offences, including theft of forest wood from the previous level of up to Rs500 (yes Rs.500!!) to Rs.1 million. The industry itself has also tried to address the problem, including through the installation of water treatment plants (133 in Punjab, 207 in Sindh and 2 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa). But there are miles to go and promises to keep for the private sector. Indeed, studies such as the one by the SDPI suggest that the only way to effectively tackle environmental issues such as deforestation, is for the private sector to come good on its CSR promises and practices.

The problem, as always, lies with the utter failure to implement plans. And the pain of that failure is hightened by hollow politico-speak and designer commitments to for e.g enhance forest cover in Pakistan from the existing level of 5.2% to 6% by 2015, uttered in photo-op events and then signing into law decisions that will go the exact opposite way.

Getting to the Root Cause: Pakistan Sets Tree Plantation Record

Pakistan chalked up another entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, when 300 volunteers planted 541,176 mangrove saplings on 15 July in the wetlands of the Indus River Delta in Thatta District. This brilliant effort comfortably beat the previous record of 447,874 in a single day held by India. Pakistan has committed to plant 120m trees as part of the UNEP's Billion Tree Campaign and to increase its forest coverage by 1m hectares by 2015. Read the UNEP press release here.

The Threat of Climate Change to Pakistan's Economy

Although its carbon footprint is amongst the lowest in the world, the threat of climate change looms large for the country, with the potential to derail its economy. Coming as it does in the wake of several battles that the government is facing on the political-economy front, this news comes as a grim reminder to planners that serious, concerted and consistent effort is required to ensure that mitigation strategies are in place for the risks at hand.

The fact that this warning came from no one less than Dr. Pachauri, the Nobel laureate Chair of the IPCC, testifies to the credibility of the claims. Speaking at a recent conference on Climate Change organised in Islamabad by the Government of Pakistan, IUCN and DFID, Dr. Pachauri outlined the link between environmental sustainability and economic growth, pointing out the stress on public resources that changes in climate change can put, especially in areas such as public health. The Prime Minister was the chief guest at the conference and expressed governmental commitment to the cause, but I've always been wary of the ability of the planners to both accord due seriousness to environmental sustainability and to grasp the link between it, economic growth and public health issues. The UNDP Pakistan estimates that environmental degradation and neglect cost Pakistan Rs. 365 billion, although there are some encouraging signs, including the fact that Pakistan has been an advocate of looking to CNG as an alternative fuel to petrol and is in fact the largest consumer of CNG in Asia (see my earlier post related to this) and the UNDP believes that it is likely to meet the MDG targets for environment. But one is forced to think that when the problem is of the magnitude and depth that it is, much more than simply declaring 2009 as the 'National Year of the Environment' is required by the Government.

And importantly, the role of the private sector needs to be defined in addressing issues of sustainability, not only in their immediate spheres as business and corporate entities by employing more environment-friendly, efficient and cleaner technologies that meet regional and international standards, but also in terms of working with the government and communities, because the environment is everyone's business.