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By Adil Zareef “ACCORDING to the Wall Street Journal, agriculture has room to run and can give investors solid returns…. How to invest? These four stocks could bring you the biggest gains of your investment career!” pops up an advert when I open my Yahoo mail.
So tighten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen. Since gold, oil and real estate are things of the past — in this space age, life and death matters less and profits dominate our global free markets — this could be your last chance to strike gold. So pick up the phone and make your fortune!
As we hear about prospective global famine and millions starving to death for want of essential food grains the hyper power nation gears up to make yet another speculative dash to make a fortune in dollars! Faulty economic policies, subverting essential food grains to cash crops (market forces for windfall dollar profits), mismanagement of existing supplies and diverting essential corns to biofuel production to meet the unsustainable lifestyle of the consumerist nations led by the worst offender of environment and human rights — the USA!
Kyoto Protocol in 1996 held great promise for conservation of the fragile planet earth, but George Bush’s contentious election in 2000 reversed these efforts as his administration stubbornly refused to sign this landmark protocol to reduce global warming and greenhouse gases. His ill-conceived ‘war on terror’ has held the world in its deadly embrace ever since! The devouring of depleting resources and finding new killing fields by the armament industry across the world has also dimmed the hope for a peaceful and prosperous future — as the world slides into anarchy — and now famine!
The World Environment Day on June 5 was a gloomy reminder of the sad facts and figures on decline in biodiversity and increase in carbon emissions and green house gases, depleting Arctic and polar icecaps, rising oceans and hurricanes, climatic upheavals and temperatures and shrinking food stocks. More and more agricultural farmlands and forests fall to acquisitive, consumption patterns, resulting in less productivity and food for the increasing population. If we continue depleting the ‘lungs of the earth’ at this rate how do we expect to live without oxygen and clean fresh air? After all our fragile biodiversity acts as carbon sinks. The global phenomenon seems to have lost its biological control in its race for an unsustainable lifestyle — or greed!
This warped western model of ‘development’ needs a paradigm shift towards the ‘quality of life’ model. Public health, education, and basic social services need to be restored for sustainable results. Our blind aping of the western model in the race for more has further eroded our traditional lifestyles that stressed conservation and frugality. Without proper checks and balances we will surely dig our own grave with diminishing resources and ravaging greed. Slogans like ‘dil mange aur’ and ‘piyo aur jiyo’ are geared to seduce the gullible youth to a mirage of glory while there is depletion and despoliation staring at us.
Strategic Country Environment Assessment by the World Bank (WB) on Pakistan estimates that the environmental degradation costs Pakistan at least six per cent of GDP or about Rs365bn per year. The burden of these costs falls disproportionately upon the poor. The report states “the most significant causes of environmental damage identified and estimated are: (i) illness and premature mortality caused by air pollution (50 per cent); (ii) diarrhoeal diseases and typhoid due to inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene (30 per cent), and (iii) reduced agricultural productivity due to soil degradation (20 per cent). The health costs associated with waterborne diseases amount to 1.8 per cent of GDP, caused by unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and inadequate hygiene.”
The WB report further states, “Vertically, the challenges relate to the division of responsibilities between national, provincial and local governments, while horizontal challenges arise as a result of the division of responsibilities between environmental, planning and sectoral agencies. Effective environmental management also requires the active participation of key institutions outside government, in particular the judiciary, civil society advocates, and the media.”
The sad fact is that although the Pakistan Environmental Act was ratified in 1997 and provincial departments have been established, they are almost non-functional. Capacity building and fully equipped provincial EPAs can go a long way in mandatory implementation of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on all development projects. The provincial environmental tribunals should be made functional to hear environmental petitions by the general public. For this we need political will and support.
Another challenge facing Pakistan is the alarming deforestation and loss of biodiversity. About 25 per cent at independence, covered forest area has come down to a staggering rate of four per cent (official) and three per cent (unofficial) which seriously threatens our livelihood if it is not reversed. The powerful timber mafia at all levels of government and private sector will not permit this unless export of timber products is totally banned and alternatives to timber are introduced in the local market.
Mr Hussainzada, provincial secretary of environment informed me, “Our forests are seriously imperilled by unregulated development mafias. Every moneyed Pakistani wants a piece of land in the hills of Nathiagali. This is destructive, but despite the ban the activity goes on!” This must stop. Murree and Abbottabad are threatened by unauthorised development schemes that go on unabated despite warnings by the environmental lobbies and adverse EIA reports. Swat has been ravaged by religious warlords who are mostly funded by the powerful timber and drug mafias in defiance of opposition from the public. The idyllic Chitral will soon be despoiled once the Lowari tunnel becomes functional for public. Without adequate safeguards all the pristine forests and hills will become extinct.
During the WED commemoration activity Sarhad Conservation Network tabled the following recommendations to the provincial government:
*Mandatory EIA on all development projects including widening of roads, buildings, development schemes, etc.
* Ban on all development schemes in agricultural farmlands, forests, etc.
* Immediate investment on developing Mass Transit Systems in the provincial metropolis and other districts to contain the growing traffic and pollution.
* Adopt a tree plantation campaign.
* Conserve each drop water conservation campaign.
* A cleaner world garbage collection/recycling campaign.
* Healthy lifestyle sanitation campaign.
* Immediate ban on all timber exports and products.
* Establishment of grassroots environment committees at tehsil, district and provincial levels.
* Practice piety, simplicity and efficiency.
Without political intervention and grassroots activism amongst all stakeholders these goals would be hard to achieve. n
The writer is a member of Sarhad Conservation Network
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