The minimum estimated annual cost of environmental and natural resource damage is about Rs 365 billion or 6 percent of the GDP, sources told Business Recorder here on Wednesday. The implication of this continuing degradation is that despite record GDP growth, many development indicators continue to show limited improvement, said the sources.
Whether judged in terms of regional performance or environmental stress factors, the aggregate sustainability indicators suggest that Pakistan faces a number of environmental challenges that could undermine the sustainability of its remarkable economic performance.
Sharing the details, sources said the highest cost is from inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene that is Rs 112 billion followed by agricultural soil degradation that is Rs 70 billion and indoor air-pollution worth Rs 67 billion.
The urban air-pollution adds another Rs 65 billion. The estimated cost of lead exposure is about Rs 45 billion. Rangeland degradation and deforestation costs are the lowest at about Rs 7 billion in total. These low estimates are somewhat misleading and reflect the lack of data that has led to partial estimation of values and the already low productivity of these resources.
Sources said that to guard against overstatement, the estimates are based on conservative assumptions and, therefore, represent the lower bounds of damage. For lack of data, the costs associated with hazardous waste and exposure to industrial and agro-cultural chemicals are not included.
"They also omit several important categories of loss, most notably fisheries and coastal zone degradation for which there is available no data. As a consequence, calculations of the relative share of damage must be interpreted with the utmost caution since the magnitude of total damages is unknown since the impact of natural resource degradation has been underestimated", said the sources.
Sources also said since water supply, sanitation and hygiene issues dominate the costs, it is tempting to argue that policy efforts should focus on this sector. Seawater intrusion may have affected over 135,000 people and led to losses in excess of $125 million. "There is little accurate data on the environmental and economic costs which can be used to take policy decisions", said the sources.
With growing water scarcity, the country will face ever more difficult trade-offs between competing demands for water that need to be managed in ways that maximise benefits to the nation. The sound economic management calls for policies in the full range of externalities social, economic and environmental.
"Economic growth is the main vehicle for promoting development and reducing poverty in a sustainable way, so it could be argued that environmental degradation is the inevitable price to pay for economic success," said the sources.
Environmental degradation disproportionately affects the poor and vulnerable. "Initially, infant mortality rates in Pakistan were lower than the average for its income group, though Pakistan grew much faster than other countries, disappointingly it lagged behind on infant mortality," said the sources.
Air and water-pollution, unsafe waste disposal, land degradation and the exposure to agro-industrial chemicals are among the leading causes of illness and child mortality in developing countries.
"All of these hazards are preventable, often through simple and cost-effective interventions", said the sources. The poor are exposed to greater environmental health risks because of the surroundings in which they live, the lack of basic services, and their greater vulnerability due to malnutrition and inadequate healthcare.
"Therefore, poverty and illness reinforce each other, contributing to exclusion and economic deprivation," said the sources. Inadequate quantity and quality of potable water and poor sanitation facilities and practices are associated with a host of illnesses such as diarrhea, typhoid, intestinal worms and hepatitis. But due to the availability of limited data, it is difficult to estimate the actual loss.
According to experts, there is a need to address environmental issues through policies and institutional reforms that create the right incentives for administrators to effectively enforce policies, and for polluters to comply with regulations. In the short-term, this may increase cost and utilise public funds that could be spent on other development concerns.
However, strategic policy-making is not possible without information on critical issues, so improving the information database in key environmental sectors, and enhancing the dissemination of this information, should be a high policy priority, the sources observed.