ISLAMABAD, Nov 29: Three developed European states have joined hands with five developing South Asian nations to clean up polluted rivers in the Hindu Kush and Himalayan regions.

“Our rivers have reached the stage where we cannot afford to damage them any more as they have become life threatening to humans and animals,” said Chairman Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) Dr Akram Kahlown.

We will be starting from smaller rivers in Islamabad like Swan river and upto the Northern Areas, Dr Kahlown said while briefing mediapersons about the European Union-funded 1.33 million euros project at a press conference here on Tuesday.

Dr Kahlown said, “rivers have been viewed as disposal sites used and abused for disposal of human, agriculture and industrial waste that is why health risks of our rivers is acute”.

Germany, Czech Republic and Austria have been providing assistance to clean up rivers in Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, India and Bangladesh.

The eight countries have been collaborating with each other for the “development of an assessment system to evaluate the ecological status of rivers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region”.

A system will be designed for the five South Asian countries to effectively clean up their polluted rivers. It would also ensure that guidelines were followed and laws abided, he said.

“As with many environmental problems, the pollution generated in rivers of Pakistan is directly related with economic activity, illiteracy and lack of will to right a few wrongs”, Dr Kahlown said adding that “despite laws, industries continue to dump their untreated wastes into the rivers.”

He said that the amount of dissolved oxygen present in water was extremely low. There were about 9.2 milligrams of oxygen per litre of water.

Prof Otto Moog from University of Applied Life Sciences and Natural Resources, Vienna, Austria, said, most rivers were polluted to a greater or lesser degree.

“The challenge facing today and tomorrow’s societies is not only to reduce current pollution input but also to restore the natural ecology of rivers and make them safer for people to use by cleaning up toxic chemicals already residing in contaminated sediments and flood plain soils”, Prof Moog said.

We would have to design a system in which people would have to be directly involved in the cleanup process and not depend on TV commercials and press to educate them on restoration of rivers. We would design the same system of cleaning the rivers for all five countries to make the job easier, Dr Moog said.

“Preventing pollution of rivers and the their ecosystems as they can be the last refuge of many plant and animal species and the water resources that they can supply represent the best hope for sustainable development in many nations”, he said.

Hence river conservation and management required a balanced approach with developed and developing nations sharing the costs equitably in a partnership that recognized the importance of rivers as a global natural resource.