'Environmental degradation major threat to sustainable development'

The Federal Minister for Environment, Hameed Ullah Jan Afridi on Tuesday said that environmental degradation is the major threat to sustainable development all over the world particularly in developing countries like Pakistan.
The Minister emphasised the need to launch collective efforts to mitigate the effects of environmental damage and take it as a challenge while commending the initiative undertaken by ACCA and WWF Pakistan to raise awareness of reporting environmental, social and sustainable information in the annual reports. He was addressing the sixth ACCA-WWF Pakistan Environmental Reporting Awards ceremony held here.
The Minister gave away trophies to the winners Attock Refinery Limited (best sustainability report-local unlisted company), English Biscuit Manufacturers Limited (best sustainability report-multinational company), Century Paper and Board Mills Limited (best environmental report-local listed company), Engro Polymer and Chemicals Limited (best environmental report-unlisted company), Pakistan Tobacco Company and AES Thermal Power Station (best environmental report-multinational company).
ACCA-WWF Pakistan Environmental Reporting Awards (PERA) were launched in 2001 with an objective to recognise and reward those organisations, which report environmental, social or full sustainability performance to encourage best practices in environmental, social and sustainability reporting and to raise awareness of corporate social responsibility issues and performance.
In recent years the awards have demonstrated their growing influence as the scheme is endorsed by the Environment Ministry and IUCN. The minister urged more companies to participate in the ACCA-WWF Pakistan Environmental Reporting Awards stating, "we would like more companies to participate in the competition."
Arif Masud Mirza, Head of ACCA Pakistan, in his opening remarks, stated that there is a need for inclusion of more information about stakeholders' engagement process and environmental and social audit.
Dr Pervez Hassan presented salient features of the Judges Report. Dr Afra Sajjad, Head of Education and Policy Development of ACCA Pakistan outlined the administrative features of the Judges Report.
Ali Hassan Habib, Director WWF Pakistan stated that the ACCA-WWF Pakistan Environmental awards provide a framework of companies to report their environmental, social and sustainability performance.