Non-availability of funds is the biggest hurdle in promoting Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices, Business Recorder learnt here on Wednesday. Pakistan - mainly a dry country with 80 percent of its landmass consists of arid and semi-arid regions. Therefore, the majority of the people depend on dry land to support their livelihoods.
Talking to Business Recorder, Environment Ministry officials said that Pakistan is among those countries, which are severely affected by desertification and land degradation. "Deforestation coupled with unsustainable management of natural resources is causing enormous environmental problems, including land degradation, loss of soil fertility, flash floods, loss of bio-diversity, reduction in land productivity, soil erosion, and many other associated problems", said the officials.
They said earlier many of the interventions were funded either under the development schemes of the government or through donor-funded projects. "It is sad that some projects were abandoned in the middle of their life for lack of funds available to the provincial governments or change in the priority of governments which often gave high priority to infrastructure development and provision of basic needs such as health, education, drinking water and so on, to rural population", officials added.
They also said that ultimately the priorities of donors also changed due to geo-political situation in the region. Moreover, some donors look for the quick results of their assistance, whereas dry land area management interventions require time to achieve impact on the ground.
"Besides funding other major barrier was the policy of state ownership that highly encouraged land degradation because the government control over land resources was weak, and more importantly, the lack of ownership or tenure rights kept away local communities from active management of uncultivated land", they said.
On the other hand, the subsidised electricity tariff (flat rate) has been introduced nationally to encourage farmers to use groundwater for enhancing agriculture production. "This tariff promotes poor use of scarce water resources of the dry land regions, especially in Balochistan, where farmers do not invest in improving irrigation efficiencies of their tube-wells for many reasons", officials said.
Provincial line agencies like agriculture, forestry, livestock and irrigation departments are directly responsible for the protection and management of land resources under their jurisdiction. However, each of these agencies operate under different mandates, for example, increasing agriculture production, managing irrigation systems, developing livestock and so on.
"No doubt many of these provincial agencies have severe limitations both in terms of human resources and capacity. Moreover, some of these agencies have over-lapping mandates. As a result, land use planning decisions are often made without proper knowledge of the interrelations between the proposed sectoral interventions and understanding of ecosystem.
Therefore, this limited knowledge about economic implications of land degradation and desertification further hinders the importance accorded to land management", said the officials. They also said this not only affects the application of sustainable land use practices, but also fails to address root causes of land degradation in the country.
Improved co-ordination among the ministries and provincial agencies would be essential to stop the land degradation and desertification process in the country, they added. It is of deep concern that the government is doing nothing in order to create awareness among the general masses regarding land degradation.
"There is very little knowledge of land degradation and desertification issues among the general public, planners, and policy-makers and even among those who are directly responsible for the management of land resources", they added.
In order to ensure long-term sustainability in promoting SLM practices, there is a need for a sustainable source of funding to continue the replication of best practices in natural resource management and SLM. "The government has to devise a fiscal regime at the national level for the continuity and replication of SLM practices for combating desertification", officials observed.
The land degradation and SLM issues can only be addressed through mainstreaming and harmonising SLM within the national development priorities and integration of desertification and deforestation prevention and control measures into national development programmes.
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