EDITORIAL: It’s great news that the United Nations has chosen Pakistan’s Living Indus Initiative (LII), which seeks to restore more than 30 percent of the Indus River Basin by 2030, among its seven UN World Restoration Flagship programmes.
LII is one of those programmes that are both ambitious and desperately needed because it looks to “spearhead and unify various efforts aimed at revitalising the ecological well-being of the Indus River within Pakistan’s borders”.
And now, with this recognition, it will be eligible for additional technical and financial support from the UN itself, which will be a substantial shot in the arm for its plan to restore 25 million hectares of the river basin in just over five years.
Such an initiative was long overdue. Pakistan has not just suffered from cataclysmic climate emergencies over the last decade or so, ranging from sudden, extreme rains to flash floods to water shortage and droughts at different times and in different parts of the country, but also from “human induced environmental degradation”.
And, to make matters worse, this deterioration was not given the attention it cried out for even as Pakistan dropped from one of the world’s most water abundant countries to among the most water scarce ones.
Still, better late than never, and now if LII is implemented properly, and gets the funding and support it needs, there’s a good chance of undoing at least some of the damage that has already been done.
The Indus Basin has been sustaining civilisation in these parts for more than 6,000 years, at least, and even today a good 95 percent of Pakistan’s population, almost all its agriculture and most of its industry depend on it. It is also, as the UN’s country representative rightly noted in his report, home to 195 mammal species, at least 668 bird species, and over 150 fish species, including 22 endemic ones and the endangered Indus Blind Dolphin, one of the world’s rarest mammals.
Going forward, “this holistic strategy employs community-led, gender-responsive, and transparent nature-based solutions for restoring the entire Indus Basin, safeguarding its resources for the people of Pakistan”.
There is, therefore, reason to be hopeful even though the official response to this crisis has come very late. Pakistanis obsessed with political polarisation tend to forget that a much more lethal time bomb has been ticking away with nobody doing much about it, and already water scarcity and climate change have become existential problems that even the best effort now will only marginally control.
The UN’s recognition, among only seven such programmes, means that the thinking in Islamabad is finally correct. Now it needs to be ensured that the operational integrity of this initiative is not compromised in any way.
Also, seeing how far this initiative can go, there needs to be a far bigger effort at the government level. We need not only to restore water sources, but also preserve the water that we do have. A report that did the rounds in the press not too long ago showed the SIFC (Special Investment Facilitation Council) lamenting the woeful scarcity of water reservoirs.
Hopefully, the success of LII will provide the blueprint for the way forward.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024