KARACHI, Jan 7: Speakers at a function on Monday urged the people not to over exploit the natural resources and conserve them for the posterity.

Speaking at the Syed Asad Ali Shah Conservation Award at the Wetland Centre, Sandspit, which was organized by the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), they called for a sustainable use of the natural resources, which, they said, was essential for a durable economic progress of the country.

“Everything in the environment is linked with another like a chain and if one of the links in the chain becomes missing or is destroyed, the entire chain will be affected,” they observed.

Citing an example, they said the industrial effluents and domestic sewage enter the sea and pollute the water and the marine life, besides contaminating the seaweeds and other small organizms. These are then eaten by the fish who are also contaminated.

The fish, they said, is consumed by the human beings so they are affected by the pollutants at the end of the process. In this way, the food chain is affected and people suffer from various diseases.

Similarly, if forests were cut massively in the northern areas, there would be a massive soil erosion during the rainy seasons and flash floods would play havoc in the area. The sub- soil aquifer would not be recharged. The water reservoirs like dams would be silted up quickly shortening the storage capacity of these dams, which in turn would affect the agricultural output of the country.

Similarly, they pointed out that burning of fossil fuels generated many harmful gasses, which resulted in the global warming leading to rising in the sea level. If this trend was changed, soon large areas of many low-lying countries and islands would be submerged.

The mass scale usage of chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides is also seriously affecting the yields of the agricultural lands, the speakers pointed out.

They said the recipient of the award, Gulbaz Afaqi, who worked in the Salt Range, had organized people of 24 villages where due to over-exploitation of the sub-soil water, the water table had been going down and many wells had gone dry. He was trying to improve the situation by organizing small loan facilities and other technical assistance from the UNEP, GEF and with the help from the WWF laid down pipelines and lined water courses due to which the water wastage had decreased.

Later, Sindh Wildlife Secretary, Shamsul Haq Memon, and Begum Fakhr-i-Jahan Asad Ali gave the award to the recipient. The award also carried a cash prize of Rs50,000, which the recipient donated to the NGO and said it would be used for small loans to be given to the community for the purchase of gas stoves and cylinders so that the people in the area burnt less wood and cut less trees.

Mr Memon, WWF chief Brig Mukhtar Ahmad, Begum Asad Ali, Ali Habib, Mr Afaqi, Dr Ejaz, and others also spoke on the occasion.