Giving
Environment Priority in Politics
By Q. Isa Daudpota
Islamabad, Pakistan
The environment
remains a low-priority area in the manifestos
of our political parties. Whenever it gets a reference
in such documents it is largely to toe the line
of international norms, rather than to emphasise
a party's real commitment to environmental security
as the foundation of other development goals.
Among the 60-odd ministries that this poor country
seems able to support, there is one meant to protect
the environment. It has a minister of state who
presumably does the dirty work and the senior
minister who is purely decorative. The top slot
invariably has a person lacking talent and clout,
who is just kept there to keep him away from the
more
powerful and lucrative ministries, which handle
bigger funds and contracts.
Though the programs of the Ministry of Environment
continue to fail, you wouldn't have suspected
that on visiting their offices located next to
the infamous Lal Masjid. According to a leading
environmentalist who visited the ministry before
it was burned by the religious fanatics, the two
ministers and the secretary and additional secretary
had all been given spanking new offices with expensive
furnishings, luxurious carpets, special tiling,
wallpaper and humongous plasma flat-screen TVs.
Compare this with the unhygienic condition at
the Aabpara food market a hundred meters from
these offices. And these are protectors of the
country's environment who have failed to crack
down on blatant violations of the Environmental
Protection Act under their very noses.
The list of violations is endless, but here are
some cases to highlight: (a) Water, sewage and
solid-waste disposal plans are grossly inadequate
for the proposed "developments," (b)
No legislation exists as to who owns the groundwater,
with the result that large hotels, building complexes,
houses and military establishments drill tube
wells without permission from the CDA, causing
many of the 170 CDA-run tube wells to run dry,
(c) Neglect of the two-year-old byelaw requiring
that all new construction should have provision
for rainwater harvesting, (d) Alteration of the
Master Plan with virtually no public discussion,
(e) Disruptive road building with destruction
of green areas to facilitate private car traffic,
without putting in place a public transport system
which would remove the need for such massive environmental
and financial costs, (f) Allowing the construction
of luxury hotels such as Centaurus, without an
EIA and public hearing and with only a token protest
by the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency,
done alongside the actual provision of utilities
to this project by the CDA, (g) Carving out a
large portion of the main city park and giving
it to an American fast-food joint on lease, (h)
Continuing to build the Kuri landfill despite
promises by the CDA and PEPA at a public hearing
to set up a committee to relocate it because of
its potential adverse effect on groundwater quality
of Rawalpindi and the capital.
Tackling environment issues teaches the centrality
of holistic thinking, planning and implementation.
It is this idea that needs to become deep-seated
in the thinking of political parties and government
agencies. The appreciation of the inter-relatedness
of actions of the government at all scales makes
the environmental ethos, with its strong connection
with holism. Narrow vertical isolation of ministries
from each other, and even within sub-departments
of each ministry, has led to inertia or wasted
effort.
In the beginning of the 1990s an environmental
fever engulfed the country. Grand preparations
were in progress for the National Conservation
Strategy with countrywide meetings and consultations.
A great deal of intellectual effort went into
the exercise at significant cost. It resulted
in a grand document, a copy of which I gave away
to a library, as it was too thick to be read and
was after all impractical. Not surprisingly, hardly
any action followed as the large funding needed
for it did not materialize. But even if it had,
much of it would have been wasted.
An agenda for environmental development and reform
must begin with thinking small, of encouraging
individuals and small, motivated groups to work
on short-term projects that have a clear, achievable
goal. It must include the large-scale use of the
electronic media to show how people across the
world and their municipalities have solved similar
problems. Through the morale built, courtesy of
the large number of small successful projects,
one would build a cadre of experienced and well-tried
people willing to take on larger projects. Think
big, act small, show success, consolidate and
then take on larger challenges. In all this, push
aside projects meant to largely boost the ego
of the planners.
We must start early, at our schools. The curricula
in our educational institutions at all levels
must be changed to relate them to environmental
issues, viewed in the largest sense, and therefore
embracing all aspects of our lives. Much learning
can happen if the curriculum is designed for students
and teachers to participate in community development
work with an emphasis on environmental projects.
Such an experience, if planned well, is worth
more than formal course work. It ought to receive
academic credit, particularly when students are
asked to do research about it, report on what
they implement, and write and speak about their
achievements and failures. This will require a
transformation of the way we educate our students
and how we assess them; i.e., make education directly
relevant to the environment of the student.
The blueprint for what needs to be done is already
outlined in the National Conservation Strategy
and later plans. The manifestos of Green Parties
around the globe are also useful as well as the
ideas and plans suggested in numerous journals
and magazine, such as those of the Worldwatch
Institute, the World Resource Institute and the
Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi.
It is essential to emphasize that human life depends
on the diversity of the natural world, that other
species are not there merely to serve the "higher"
human beings. Equally important is the need for
people to realize that the success of a society
cannot be measured by narrow economic indicators,
but is through taking account of factors affecting
the quality of life of all people: personal freedom,
justice, social equity, health, happiness and
human fulfillment.
As political parties in Pakistan set out to tell
the people how they will act in the next parliament,
it would do us all a lot of good if their policy
wonks study carefully the ideas and documents
discussed above.
(The writer is an engineer and a physicist with
an interest in the environment)
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