KARACHI, June 4: Like other parts of the world, the Environment Day is being observed in Pakistan on Wednesday.

Painting exhibitions, awareness walks and presentations by NGOs, workshops and seminars by different government and non-governmental forums, highlighting ways and means for a sustainable development, have been planned on the occasion.

It is good to identify and accept the strategy of sustainable development and livelihood. The Environment Day provides an opportunity to express ourselves and develop a consensus amongst national and international communities to preserve the environment, care for the earth and undertake development.

The day’s theme for this year is: “Give Earth a Chance”. In fact, the message for the mankind, irrespective of gender differences, is: give yourselves a chance, as incessant exploitation has left the planet earth ravaged and put your survival and development at risk as well.

Of course, it is a time to think over the path taken by human beings. We have to address collectively the problems of pollution, ecological destruction, population explosion, resources scarcity and environmental degradation.

According to reports of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Resources Institute, today forest covers 27 per cent of the world’s land, as compared to about 50 per cent 10,000 years ago. Deforestation worldwide continues at a rate of 9.4 million hectors a year, posing serious threats to human communities and natural ecosystem at the outset of the 21st century.

While talking about environmental degradation, it may be noted that deforestation, water scarcity, soil degradation and exposure to agricultural and industrial chemicals and organic pollutants affect women and men in varying ways.

According to the UN report on human development, the amount of time individuals spent on household duties may dramatically increase with the depletion of resources. Commercial logging in some parts of the world affects men, who must travel longer distance in the forest to collect the household construction material.

For women, forest degradation makes it more difficult to collect wild herbs, fruits and natural medicines. Women are often most keenly affected by forest degradation, which lead them to a quadrupling of women’s time spent in gathering fuel wood, added the report.

Studies suggest that girls are often responsible for collecting water and fuel wood and scarcity of the two resources also contributes to higher school dropout rates for them. As women and men travel longer distances for fuel wood, fodder and water, they expend larger amount of energy.

The WHO estimates that the energy used to carry water may consume one-third of woman’s daily calorie intake.

The policy of “wait until it turns hazardous” could also be blamed for any overall deterioration, but at the same time it is also questionable whether we are well-equipped to catch the environmental concerns young.

No doubt human beings have impacted upon the natural environment, but it is never too late to have a turnaround.

Karachi, like other big cities of the world, is faced with serious environmental problems. It needs integrated policies and broad inter-sectoral approach for sustainable environmental development and implementations, otherwise human environment would continue to be damaged in life-threatening ways. The lack of environmental laws and legislation, ineffective implementation of the existing legislations, lack of inter- departmental communication, unplanned development and uncontrolled urbanization were the reasons behind the ever- increasing environmental problems in this city of over 12 million people.

According to the city government sources, on average 8,000 tones of solid waste are generated in the city, 50 to 55 per cent of which is lifted and transported to the two officially-managed dumping grounds, while the rest is thrown in ditches and open or abandoned plots within the city.

The unorganized scavengers — mostly Afghan refugees — and recycling operators have also their share. They pick 20-25 per cent of the garbage. The remaining 15-20 per cent is either burned openly at Kutchra Kundies and streets or left to the mercy of nature.

Expert believe that about 20 per cent of the hospital waste generated every day in the city is hazardous. The careless disposal of hospital waste has become a grave health hazard. Much is required from the government, which has been failing to introduce laws on medical waste disposal.

About 330 million gallons of industrial and domestic untreated effluents are being dumped every day into the sea. Man’s increasing activities (power plants, industries, oil companies) along the coast also pose a serious threat to the coastal environment and its inhabitants in the shape of pollution.

On the other hand, elimination of mangroves along the coast is also taken as a reason for soil erosion.

Thousands of vehicles continuously emit unwanted smoke throughout the city every day, posing serious health threats to the citizens, but those remain unchecked. The air quality is much below the international standard.

However, traffic police and the environmental protection agency remain indifferent to the smoke-emitters. It is claimed that they lack scientific gadgets required to check the vehicles.

The situation is not very much different in the case of noise pollution, water contamination, discharge of hazardous gases and chemicals from industries.

Environmental activists blame the Sindh Environment Protection Agency (EPA) in this regard and maintain that it is considerably active against the industrial sector, while the rest of the offenders are free to play the havoc. After termination of the World Bank fund for the project, the EPA has been failing to justify its existence. It is resource constrained and can not act on its own.

Under the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997, an environmental protection tribunal was also announced in the case of Karachi in October 1999, but its activation is still to be seen. In January 2001 the registrar and other staff of the tribunal were appointed, while the post of chairman has fallen vacant for the third time. The government is yet to provide a suitable building for the establishment of the tribunal’s office at Karachi.

On the other hand, environmental magistrates, supposed to deal with the environment-related cases in districts, also could not be made operational so far.

The environmental issues and negative impacts can be attributed to the lack of participatory role by the community as well. The problems, like smoke emission, solid waste management, pollution of water and noise pollution, could be alleviated or largely avoided by undertaking locally-scaled activities.

To conclude, it may be said that different rules pertaining to environment and related initiatives mostly suffered due to weak commitments of the government and the community. Things would remain unchanged unless we are ready to give ourselves a chance.