Cleaner environment has emerged as an uphill task during the last few years owing to population increase and depleting resources. The governments, international organisations and the community have been doing their bit to cope with the situation. But, despite efforts by various departments, NGOs and community, the incidents like deaths in Hyderabad due to drinking contaminated water and killing of fish in Rawal Dam continues to occur.
The country is still facing problems like waste management, contaminated drinking water, better sanitation facilities, air pollution control, protection of forest covered areas and the population growth.
The government on its part has been striving for cleaner environment and recently formulated the new Environment Policy to control the environmental degradation.
The policy aims at strengthening sectoral institutional capacity, raise environmental awareness, promulgate environmental legislation, including National Environment Quality Standards and the establishment of Environment Tribunals.
Since 2001, the government had been endeavouring to achieve healthy environment and sustainable livelihood by improving quality of air, water and land with civil society co-operation.
Initial Environment Examination (IEE) and Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) have been made mandatory for all public sector development projects.
Various projects were started to effectively execute the National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) focusing on the protection of environment by adopting integrated approach.
Protection and management of land resources; combating deforestation and drought; sustainable agriculture; conservation of biological diversity; environmentally sound biotechnology management and protecting ocean has been the main focus.
Pakistan is a signatory to many international conventions and agreements and under the Montreal Protocol, has imposed ban on the import of used ODS/CFC based equipment.
It has also ratified to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by preparing national Green House Gases inventories and through launching "mitigation of Climate Change" and the "adoption of Global Change Principles" projects.
Biodiversity Action Plan and Desertification Combat Action Plan as well as Medium Term Development Framework of Environment (MTDF 2005-10) have been prepared to achieve tangible progress.
The MTDF adopted a modest and rational policy approach in selection of 115 environment projects, in brown and green environment and inter-sectoral and capacity building areas.
Overall finance outlay for the MTDF has been substantially increased to Rs 21.708 billion that includes Rs 10,743.77 million for human resource development, education and research.
These allocations stood at Rs 4.558 billion during the last five years.
In PSDP, Rs 642 million were allocated for environment sector projects and this size for 2005-06 would be increased to around Rs 1200 million. It would include new projects for capacity building, forestation, and drought management.
On the other side, the figures show that per capita water availability had decreased to 1105 cubic meter from 5300 cubic meter in 1951 when most of fresh water resources were severely contaminated.
Around 45 percent of total population lacked access to relatively safe drinking water and around 60 percent lacked sanitation facilities.
Air pollution was on rise in urban areas and was estimated six times higher than the WHO standards. Noise pollution had also emerged as the other serious issue.
Less than 60 percent of total 54,850 tonne solid waste generated daily in urban areas is collected as there is no proper waste collection and disposal system at municipality level.
Deforestation rate has been estimated at 0.2 percent to 0.5 percent per annum and the 4.8 percent forest covered area could not be substantially increased since 1992. More than 29 million cubic feet wood is cut every year.
Ten particular species of rich ecosystems were considered to be critically threatened, while desertification affects over 43 million hectares of land every year.
The country is highly energy inefficient as it approximately uses the same amount of energy to generate one dollar of GNP as the Unites States.
There are other numerous minor and major challenges facing the government in this sector that need serious attention and collaborative efforts.
Thus the environmental improvement requires consistent, vigorous, concentrated and integrated efforts to ensure the halting of further degradation of natural resources, and pollution of water and air. This would require a sizeable level of investment during the next five years.
Community must be motivated by citizen community boards and the local governments for playing their key role in controlling the environmental degradation.
Alternate energy resources for forest area dwellers, early execution of clean drinking water project, launching air and water monitoring system and inclusion of environment chapters in curricula can also serve a lot.
Strict monitoring of the ongoing project to make them more result-oriented, building capacity at all levels, NGOs effective participation and seeking more donors assistance are the other areas of immediate attention.
Last, but not least, community awareness programmes, strict implementation of existing laws and judicious efforts by all stakeholders bears pivotal were direly needed at this juncture.
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