KARACHI, April 24: Speakers at a seminar here on Thursday stressed the need to preserve water resources and conserve fertility of soil.

Environment experts said that wetlands faced a variety of threats, primary among which was the lack of proper management and ignorance of the importance of healthy wetlands.

The speakers were giving their views at a seminar on “Promoting Effective Water Management for a Better Environment”, to mark the Earth Day 2003, with water as its central theme. The seminar was held at Pakistan Press Foundation-PPF, Vicky Zeitlin Media Library.

The environment experts said that despite Pakistan’s great reliance on wetlands, those were still being degraded at an alarming rate, and in the Indus basin the main problem was the rising salinity and waterlogging. Pointing out the root-causes of the threats to wetlands ecosystem, they said that lack of awareness about the preservation of wetlands, absence of sustainable resources management policies and lack of legislation and enforcement were the major factors.

Speaking at the seminar, Wetland Conservation Officer, WWF, Rahat Jabeen, called for checking deforestation in wetlands to control the pollution and avert destruction of natural beauty.

She pointed out that due to neglect of wetlands animal species including birds, fish and insects are shifting in search of more hospitable sites.

Rahat said that rural communities depended upon wetlands and high population growth rates forced wetland communities to overuse the resources in order to meet their basic needs.

She said the discharge of sewerage effluent and industrial waste into the waters of wetlands resulted in serious damage to the species in wetlands.

She further said that deforestation on a large scale throughout the catchment of flood plains and other wetlands areas resulted in flash floods, loss of tree cover, perpetual flow and loss of top soil.

“The main cause of deforestation lies in man and animal’s quest for fuel, timber and fodder. Mangrove trees of the Indus delta and Balochistan are facing a major threat in the form of deforestation,” she said.

The flood plains, she said, were also directly affected by construction of dams and barrages, as flooding regimes were altered both upstream and downstream.

Drainage programmes have also caused loss of natural water bodies and only 25 per cent of the water from the Indus river actually reaches the Indus delta.

The environmentalist said farmers and agriculturists should be induced to practice water management resulting in conservation of greater amount of water and reduction in damage to the soil.

Director World Conservation Union (IUCN), Tahir Qureshi, said that water logging had fast reduced the soil fertility.

“Loss of fertility and mismanagement of water resources is also resulting in dwindling of woody plants, wild life, mangrove forest and other plants,” he said.

Highlighting the importance of mangrove, he said it sustained the livelihood of 1.5 million people who were engaged in fishing.—APP