The World Wide Fund for Nature Pakistan (WWF-P) expressed concern on the absence of environment as a separate sector in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper-II (PRSP-II) here on Thursday. According to a WWF-P's spokesman, the PRSP-II document does not identify environment sector specific indicators, in contrast to PRSP-I that dealt with the subject at length.
This is despite the government's interest in developing these. If the PRSP-II is serious about targeting poverty alleviation then it must highlight environmental management and conservation as a focus of sectoral intervention.
WWF-P said the PRSP-II recognises linkages between poverty and environment, and their impacts on poor communities. "However, this recognition could easily be supported by concrete steps, including measuring the availability, quality and access to environmental resources by poor populations, identifying clear indicators to measure the impacts of budget allocations and policy implementation on poor communities and their dependency on environmental assets. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) could be a source of guidance for this exercise," it added.
"The Ministry of Environment's central role in economic planning documents, such as PRSP and MTDF, remains unacknowledged. To date no annual state of the environment report is available to guide planning enshrined in such documents," the WWF-P observed.
The WWF-P, as part of a group of interested organisations, is enthusiastic about supporting the government in this endeavour and is willing to engage and host public consultations. "It has already convened a stakeholder workshop in May 2008 on mainstreaming environment into the PRSP-II. However, a lot has changed significantly since then. In the eagerness to push ahead, the consultation process for this document appears to have been somewhat neglected," it added.