CONSIDER a couple of unpalatable realities: the amount of solid waste that is dumped or finds its way into the Karachi harbour every day, just from the city, is estimated at some 8,000 tons; moreover, some 350 million gallons of raw sewage and untreated industrial waste flow into the harbour on a daily basis.

These are not the only ways in which Pakistanis’ activities are harming the oceans.

On Friday, a workshop ‘Ghost Nets and Fisheries of Pakistan’ was held in Karachi, jointly organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan and the Olive Ridley Project for the conservation of the Indian Ocean.

Experts pointed out that ghost gear — ie fishing equipment that has been discarded, lost or abandoned in the marine environment — has become a serious, escalating threat to marine life and the fisheries sector.

Stressing upon the need to educate fishing communities and launch clean-up drives, they explained how the gear continues to trap and kill creatures, damages the marine habitat and constitutes a hazard to navigation.

For a country where the fishing sector is counted as a component of the economy and is a vital source of livelihood for scores of communities, there certainly seems to an absence of regard for the waters.

Yet Pakistan constitutes one of the relatively minor abusers of the oceans as compared to many highly developed and industrialised countries.

The rate at which the global marine habitat is being destroyed and species’ numbers depleted, either as a result of a hostile environment or overfishing, have in recent decades led to legislation and regulations being formulated at different levels.

But experts say that the worldwide marine conservation regimes in place are, literally, a drop in the ocean of what requires to be done. Will the trajectory be corrected before it is too late? Sadly enough, mankind’s track record is not so encouraging in this regard — the decades of naysaying and foot-dragging over recognising the phenomenon of climate change is a case in point.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2016