In a report, the Punjab Planning and Development Department has revealed that most of the district governments being in the nascent stage do not include environment high on their agenda. The major urban cities of Punjab are confronted with environmental hazards such as noise pollution, air pollution, drinking water contamination and waste water problems. The situation is no different in other big cities.
The report further points out that constraints are due to lack of competent staff. At present the Environment Protection Agency (EPAs), Punjab, has a staff of some 270 persons. Among them only 22 are inspectors who are responsible for around 50,000 industrial units in the province. Efforts to train staff have been undermined by a vicious circle of low motivation, under-funding and poor results, with trained workers leaving to find jobs elsewhere. Resources are short: computers have been purchased, but are not being used productively, and records are still kept in brown paper files, obviating rapid and targeted analysis, the report points out.
The provincial EPAs are confined to provincial capitals except in Punjab where devolution has taken place in various districts. The Punjab EPA has a weak relationship with the EPA at the federal level. It is primarily a provincial entity rather than being a branch of the EPA at the provincial levels.
The report says major urban cities of Punjab suffer from water contaminated with bacteria and arsenic poison. Unplanned industrialisation of urban centres has turned rivers into dumping ground of industrial waste. The devolution plan envisaged the creation of separate environment department headed by a district officer in each district. This has resulted in two problems: it perpetuates the segregation of renewable natural resource management from the rest of economic development activities and overlaps with the jurisdiction of several other departments including agriculture and education.
However, the devolution plan has not been implemented in true spirit in all provinces. In Sindh, environment has not been devolved, where degradation of environment and natural resources is more severe.
Environment and renewable natural resource portfolio should have been integrated into all sectoral interventions and projects. For any initiative to be implemented, environment and local level renewable natural resource management would have been factored into concept, design, project formulation, financing approval and implementation and monitoring.
It would have been more realistic, if the district co-ordination officer would have been given overall responsibility of environmental issues. As this position is better placed for aggregating at the district level--- all land use plans and environmental management plans developed by or in consultation with the citizen community boards. To some extent, in NWFP, this kind of mechanism has been devised.
As a matter of fact, distribution of the district financial resources among various sectors is of serious concern. In this context, environment and its related sectors are always at a disadvantage. This is because local politicians are more interested in infrastructure interventions rather than addressing chronic and potentially more serious problems such as solid waste management, sanitation, forest depletion, loss of biodiversity, degradation of grazing lands and loss of agriculture productivity through soil erosion etc.
The district nazims are tenure specific, hence they are more interested in short-term interventions and are unable to see bigger picture. They do not like long-term strategic interventions. Though, it is mandatory under the plan that the district nazim would give development vision.
Management of environment and natural resources has been seriously constrained by the apparent apathy on the part of many local communities to resource management concerns. This impression of disinterest arises precisely because there is no governance mechanism that allows local management. Since, people are not organised at the local level; there is no mechanism for collective analysis of local problems and hardly any attempt to solve them.
While individuals in communities are fully cognizant of degradation and depletion of natural resources, they are powerless to do any thing about them because management authority either lies with the federal or provincial authorities. Almost every community is committed to wise management of natural resources, but they get no official recognition and are, therefore, not in a position to make lasting impact. The devolution plan provided an opportunity to remedy that situation but it was not availed.