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| June 27, 2005 | Monday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 19, 1426 |
‘500 water purification plants to be set up’
ABBOTTABAD, June 26: State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ms Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli has said that the government has initiated a Rs66 billion project for construction of reservoirs and lining of canals.
She said the government had started practical work on different areas with a view to save environmental degradation. She said 500 purification plants would be set up in the country to provide safe and clean drinking water to the people.
She was speaking at the opening of the first international conference on Environmentally Sustainable Development (ESDev-2005), organized by the Comsats Institute of Information Technology here on Sunday. More than 20 scholars and speakers from abroad are participating in the three-day event.
The minister said 75 per cent natural resources existed in rural areas and asked experts and scientists to come up with concrete and practical suggestions to exploit these resources in the most environment sustainable way. The recommendations should focus on three major stakeholders, the planet, the people and prosperity, she said.
Speaking on the occasion, Hoaliang Xu, representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said results of sustainable development could not be achieved unless the government, the public and donor agencies made joint efforts.
He called for three steps that must be taken to achieve the targets: environmental governance, institutions development through legislation and comprehensive national environmental plan.
Mr Xu said water resources in Pakistan were under pressure and added that the country which had been a water surplus country, faced water shortage in agriculture sector.
He said that according to reports, Pakistan was suffering a loss of Rs150 billion to Rs180 billion per year of agriculture GDP due to land degradation. In forest sector, the deforestation rate was 0.2 per cent to 0.5 per cent per year, which was among the world’s highest rates, he said.
Mr Xu said the UNDP had planned to meet environmental challenges of sustainable human development and spending a lot to achieve is objectives.
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