Pakistan could brave the onslaught of tsunami by planting more mangroves at its coastal belts, speakers at a conference said on Tuesday. The theme of the moot was "The Effects of Tsunami in Japan and Disaster Risk Reduction Mechanism," which was organised by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) under its initiative, Mangroves for the Future (MFF), at its office here.
Aban Markel Kabraji, IUCN Regional Director, Asia while underlining the importance of mangroves plantation said that to overcome the natural calamities the best investment was on low tech and low cost vegetation ie mangroves. She said that the development of mangrove forests, which was once under many organisations, has now been tasked to Environment Department Sindh.
Kabraji said that Pakistan was not immune from tsunamis as its 1067km coastline is mostly barren and exposed thus prone to natural disasters. She gave an example of the 1945 tsunami that hit the coast of Balochistan, including the recent 2010 cyclone Phet that ended up hitting Gwadar and Keti Bandar, resulting in loss of property in Gwadar and surrounding areas.
She warned that the regular occurrence of natural disasters in the country's coastline could one day hit Karachi resulting in a terrible catastrophe. She said that the impact of recent flooding in Pakistan could have been less if forests in Northern Areas were in good conditions.
She said that in order to prevent such a disaster the afforesting of mangroves and other alternatives along the coast was required. She said that a green belt of at least 1 mile or 1.5 km is needed in Karachi. She quoted another example of Bangladesh that after the cyclones during 70's and 80's people started planting mangrove trees along the coast that later on prevented flooding in Bangladesh.
Ghulam Qadir, National Resource Management (NRM) expert at IUCN said that in the past over 600,000 hectares of Indus Delta land was under mangrove forests but this had reduced considerably to just 86,000 hectares. He said that excessive clearance of forests for other purposes along with reduction in amount of water ie fresh water were the reasons for this decrease.
He said that the IUCN had replanted mangroves over 30,000 hectares area. Shah Murad Aliani said that existence of a green belt at the coast prevents construction while encouraging local wildlife. He said that Pakistan accounts for one the lowest amount of forest areas ie 4.3 percent, a sorry figure as compared to the international requirement of 25 percent. Murad further said that mangroves are also helpful in mitigating the sea intrusion.
Rafiul Haq said that MFF builds on a history of coastal management intervention before and after the 2004 tsunami and particularly call to continue the momentum and partnerships generated by the immediate post tsunami responses. He further said that the natural barrier of mangrove was more suitable as the construction of concrete walls at coastlines create seismic changes and would eventually break down.
Rafi said that livelihood of around 400,000 along Pakistani coasts were at stake, saying that new plantation can improve the livelihood opportunities. He also said that mangroves were very good from environment point of view as they are one of the best carbon storing plants in nature.
He said that the IUCN would provide two kinds of funds ie small grants worth $100,000 and large grants worth between S$200,000 -300,000 for projects related to coastal development. Ghulam Qadir informed about other projects of ICUN including the plantation of Juniper Trees in Ziarat and the introduction of low lying crops in Balochistan.
Comments
Comments are closed.