By Mukhtar Alam
KARACHI, Nov 30: An NGO, claiming to be working on environmental issues, has made two video-documentaries, highlighting problems faced by population in the Indus delta due to environmental degradation.
The documentaries shot and handled by a teams of professionals, though short in duration, refer to many environmental issues, particularly pertaining to quantity and quality of water in the focus areas, enabling the viewers to grasp the diversity of environment in Sindh Province.
The issues needed not only to be depicted at length but should be addressed on priority basis, otherwise the dream of sustainable use of natural resources with a sense of equitability would remain unfulfilled, some of the viewers commented after watching the documentaries.
The documentaries, “Land of Indus” (22 minutes), and “Once it was my home” (13 minutes), have been recently produced and released by Sindh chapter of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in compact disc format.
The two documentaries have been produced in three languages- English, Urdu and Sindhi- with the objective of sensitizing policy makers, the quarters responsible for environmental decay and the Indus delta population, which is being directly or indirectly affected due to environmental degradation.
An IUCN coordinator, Nasir Ali Panhwar, said that his organization sought to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of Nature and to ensure equitable and ecologically sustainable use of natural resources.
In Pakistan we wanted to empower communities to participate in the implementation of the National Conservation Strategy, he said, adding that one of our areas of work was capacity building for the environment and sustainable development, which was undertaken through training people and assisting material development.
“Land of the Indus” depicted Sindh environment in all its diversity, besides emphasising various environmental issues faced by the province, Mr Panhwar said. “Once this was my home” highlighted linkage between environmental degradation and poverty in the Indus Delta and attempted to show how the sea intrusion in the coastal tracts along the southern coastline of the country had led to the loss of livelihood of the local population, migration and rise in poverty in the area, he added.
The two documentaries produced with the support of Royal Norwegian Embassy, Islamabad, and British High Commission, Islamabad, have number of shots in common.
The films maintained that 360 million gallons of untreated effluents and municipal waste was being thrown into the sea at Karachi per day. During the years, pollution has increased in the Arabian sea due to marine and land-based activities.
Referring to the ecological changes taking place in the Indus River in the wake of reduced flow of fresh water and sea moving into delta since 1999, the documentaries maintain that Indus delta area down stream Kotri Barrage has been of significant value as far as the shrimp catch, forests, mangroves and agriculture is concerned.
It is viewed that the area directly supported a population of over 130,000 people, predominantly engaged in activities related to the direct or indirect use of the Indus. The livelihood of one million people was under threat due to depletion of water in Indus, while on the other hand mangroves and migratory birds were also being affected due to unchecked flow of waste in the system, the documentaries claimed.
The documentaries also highlighted the damage done and possible threats to wetlands of Sindh, including that of Haleji. The households in the villages around the Manchar Lake, also drew the focus of IUCN’s documentary team.
Manchar wetland is dying, while the oldest inhabitants of Sindh, “Mohana”, the fishermen caste of Manchar area, living in their floating boathouses, are also under threat due to increased flow of polluting effluents into the lake and its depleting fresh water intake.
The disappearance of wildlife and its impact on ecosystem has also been highlighted in one of the documentaries. Scarcity of water, overgrazing by animals and depleting indigenous plants have also been highlighted.
DAWN
http://www.dawn.com/2003/12/01/local8.htm
There are lots of other reports describing what water means to delta people and what effects it has on the delta region. The painful thing is this that despite everything, the leaders of all times have never cared to budge an inch from the policy of building more dams on Indus.
Why are we trying to irrigate an un-cultivated patch of land in Punjab by making already irrigated lands in sindh barren? The argument of electricity generation is something different as at the moment we are producing electricity in surplus and today’s IMF report on corruption in WAPDA explains how our electricity problem has compounded. Is this it that our policy is to benefit WAPDA officials by over-looking wide-spread corruption in WAPDA itself?