June 12, 2008	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 07, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 11: Government allocation for environment preservation and development projects dropped by Rs1 billion . The government allocated an estimated Rs7.5 billion compared with Rs8.5 billion last year.

Despite claims of significant progress in developing environmental policies and regulatory frameworks, setup of environmental institutions and raising awareness, environment degradation continued to affect livelihoods and health.

It had also increased vulnerability of the poor to disasters and environment related conflicts.

The utilisation in the environment sector had been low due to delayed approval of projects, late release of funds, and more importantly the slow implementation of approved projects.

The overall expenditure on some 58 environment projects up to June 2008 was expected to be just Rs3.9 billion giving a utilisation of around 46 per cent.

Clean Air Initiative, Meteorology/Climatology, Forestry, Biodiversity and Watershed Management were some of the areas where efforts were either underway or being planned.

Lack of capacity building was recognized as the major hurdle in way of efficient realization of environmental objectives in the Medium-Term Development Framework 2005-10.