ISLAMABAD, March 29: Balance should be maintained in the equation of sustained development, conservation of environment and population growth rate within Saarc countries.

This was stated by the state minister for environment and rural development, Maj (retired) Tahir Iqbal. He was speaking as chief guest at the inaugural session of a 2-week Saarc training course on "Environment, Population and Development," here on Monday.

As many as 15 delegates are participating in the training course from seven Saarc countries. The event has been organized by Saarc Human Resource Development Centre (SHRDC).

South Asia, which constitutes 23 per cent of the world's population, is the poorest region in the world. Likewise, 35 per cent of the region's population is living below the poverty line, surviving on daily income of less than a dollar a day.

At the same time, the region is confronted with massive unchecked population growth as its population crossed 1.3 billion mark by 2000 from 1.1 billion at the start of 1990s, the minister said.

"The high level of population growth has put tremendous pressure on the natural resources of the region. As a result, air pollution, contamination of ground and surface water, forest resources erosions, degradation and desertification of land due to loss of forest cover, water logging and salinity problems have become prominent in the region," he said.

And, if this trend continues in the years to come, then poverty and malnutrition will remain the major problems among the Saarc countries, Mr Iqbal said. He said the time had come when the Saarc countries should evolve collective strategies to provide better living standards to their poor masses.

Population control and human resource development, he said, were the major areas to be focussed on for poverty alleviation and to improve the environmental situation in the region.

And, they (Saarc countries) can only tackle these problems if they start benefiting from each other's experiences in the areas they have performed well. We have to maintain a balance between industrial growth and environmental conservation as the former is considered a major threat to the latter," the minister said.

He also called upon the Saarc countries to divert their resources towards poverty reduction as it would help solve most of their problems. In his welcome speech, SHRDC director Dr M. Zahangir Kabir said social and economic welfare of human beings was directly linked to their environment. He said the interplay between population growth, resources' depletion and environmental degradation had been a matter of debate for decades.

In fact, Dr Kabir said, both population growth and un- sustainable development were the main causes for concern in the region. In case of Pakistan, accelerating economic and demographic pressures were the real cause of environmental problems.

S. Ejaz Wasti, course coordinator, said the course was based on environment, population and development context; environment, population and development intervention; social policy analysis; environmental management and sustainable development; techniques of demographic and environmental analysis, and political economy of migration.

He said sustainability and human security were among the major challenges faced by the humanity and, to a great extent, depended on the interaction between population, development and environment.

Mr Wasti also called for increase in assistance by international organizations in these areas for training, research, policy formulation and the integration of population and environment related factors in planning, creating awareness and strengthening database.