News
Monday, July 19, 2010
‘Pakistan faces environmental degradation of Rs 365bn yearly’* Planning Commission official says country suffering excessive environmental damage
* G-B forest secretary says renewable natural resources main identity of areaStaff Report
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is facing a yearly environmental degradation of Rs 365 billion or Rs 1 billion daily, which is excessive environmental damage in monetary terms for an underdeveloped country, Planning Commission Environment Section chief Dr Aurangzeb Khan said on Sunday.
He made these remarks while addressing a workshop titled ‘Mapping of EIA processes in Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B)’ organised by the G-B Environment Protection Agency (EPA) in collaboration with IUCN Pakistan. The Planning Commission official said that the figure of environmental degradation was estimated by the World Bank. “Keeping in view the compliance and monitoring aspects that are becoming more and more stringent internationally, we need to improve our planning, monitoring and implementation tools,” stressed Aurangzeb. He said that one of the ways to solve the problem was the introduction of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) at every policy level and the proper enforcement of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) at project levels. The workshop brought together all the relevant stakeholders including federal and provincial government departments, civil society organisations, international organisations, educational institutions and environmental experts to chalk out a strategy for EIA practices in G-B.
The purpose for conducting the workshop was to finalise the implementation of an EIA process in G-B in consultation with all the stakeholders. The EIA map was an instrument to gauge the strength and weaknesses of an EIA system with respect to its formal organisation and implementation. It also contributes to the formulation of the priorities for strengthening the EIA. In addition, the EIA map provides a useful reference for monitoring and evaluating purposes. G-B Secretary Forest, Tourism and Environment Imran Sikandar Baloch said that renewable natural resources were the main identity of G-B. He told the audience that 45,000MW of hydropower could be utilised from the area. Baloch said that the widening of the Karakoram Highway was underway and the Diamir-Bhasha and Bunji dam projects had been approved. He warned that if all these projects were started without an EIA, G-B would lose its natural resources.
EPA Director Asadullah Faiz said the organisation of the workshop was praiseworthy and it would promote the EIA in G-B. He said that the environmental situation of G-B was neglected by previous governments but IUCN Pakistan was paying due attention to the area.
Faiz said that the IUCN was consulting the EPA to make this project successful. The chief guest G-B Chief Secretary Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammad appreciated the decision to include G-B in the EIA map project. He said that the local population largely depended on the natural resources of G-B, which made it the most sensitive ecological area of Pakistan.
The participants of the workshop were of the view that Pakistan had achieved an impressive level of economic growth. But this growth had a very high price tag. It was estimated that environmental degradation costs the country at least 6 percent of the GDP. It was unanimously agreed, at the workshop, that the two very effective tools that could help achieve sustainable development were EIA and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk