ISLAMABAD, May 16: About 29 million people could be affected from possible floods in 2012, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) official warned on Wednesday.
Warning all provincial governments of the possible flood-related devastation, NDMA Chairman Zafaq Iqbal said there would be more monsoon rains this year.
He said “the NDMA has asked for Rs20 billion from provincial governments to start preparations in order to avert possible flood devastations.”
The NDMA chief said the federal government has also been requested to release Rs5 billion in this regard.
Iqbal said monsoon rains are likely to begin from the mid-June. CNBC
MITHI, May 5: People living in a village of Thar district said they had seen a mysterious flying object come crashing down on a school building late on Friday night. Some villagers even said they were sure that the object was a meteorite.
The object struck Ladki village of Diplo taluka, 60 kilometres from here. It caused a small crater in the school ground. The object weighed about few hundred grams. Prem Shivani – dawn.com
Land is a critical productive asset and the majority of livelihoods in the dry lands of the developing world depend on it.
The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is one of the main environmental treaties, borne out of the Rio Earth Summit, and it addresses land; its resources, its productivity and the role of stakeholders in combating desertification.
Those poor people, who use land to meet their daily livelihood needs – farmers, tenants, agricultural workers and pastoral communities – are the primary stakeholders for desertification.
They are the ones whose decisions and practices affect the health of top soil, in either positive or negative ways.
In many of the world’s least developed and underdeveloped countries, access to land and land governance systems do not provide the proper entitlements or access to land for poor tenants and pastoralists.
This is one of the main reasons why these communities are not encouraged to take care of the land on which they depend.
While climatic changes and prolonged droughts are putting increasing pressure on the productivity of soil, the government’s lack of interest in agriculture and natural resource management worsens the problem.
This absence of title of land for the landless tillers and the denial of legitimate access to rangelands for pastoralists, are adding to the increase in desertification, as people do not own the land titles they do not care about the land.
Land ownership in Pakistan
Pakistan’s example is most pertinent. Land ownership in Pakistan is highly concentrated: 75% of agricultural land is owned by just 25% of the people – while the rest of the agri-land is owned by the 75% small famers.
Land owners in Pakistan are mostly absentee land lords, while the work is done by peasants and share croppers who get their income as part of the harvest’s proceeds.
SCOPE Pakistan works with stakeholders on the ground to raise awareness of desertification issues.
These peasants have been demanding land for a long time, and there has so far been three attempts to take excess land from large land owners to re-distribute it to the landless farmers – but without political influence they were unable to regain much land and the impacts of land reforms were minimal.
Land degradation in the form of water logging, salinity on canal irrigated lands and soil erosion on rain-fed land can be observed in Pakistan.
Around 50% of the farm land in Pakistan is subjected to desertification. The impact of land degradation on large farms – owned by absentee land lords in for example the Sindh Province – can be observed more prominently than that is small farms in say the Punjab province, where average land holdings are relatively small (less than 25 acres).
With no access to titles, pastoralists have no incentive to manage rangeland, which are mostly owned and managed by the Forest Department.
Here you can see large scale deforestation and uncontrolled exploitation of natural fauna and flora, resulting in desertification.
There are, however, some examples across the country where communities have somehow maintained their local control on a small scale and where the rangelands are still very healthy.
Moving forward
In the absence of inclusive land governance and pro-poor land access policies, UNCCD objectives can be hard to accomplish.
Co-operation among stakeholders cannot achieve its objectives until the primary stakeholders – tenants, peasants, pastoralists and small land holders – are taken on board and empowered by creating an enabling environment.
Continuous absence of tenure rights, long overdue and reforms and pro-poor land access policies are the main hurdles in creating this environment for grassroots actors in which they can play a role in protecting productive soil and land resources.
The UNCCD recognizes this principle in Article 3 (a), which states:
“The Parties should ensure that decisions on the design and implementation of programmes to combat desertification and/or mitigate the effects of drought are taken with the participation of populations and local communities and that an enabling environment is created at higher levels to facilitate action at national and local levels.”
And Article 5 (e), which demands its parties to:
“Provide an enabling environment by strengthening, as appropriate, relevant existing legislation and, where they do not exist, enacting new laws and establishing long-term policies and action programmes.”
Participation of grassroots land users is absolutely essential, and can only be made possible when they are accommodated in the national level decision making and policy development process.
As much as 50% of farmland in Pakistan is affected by desertification.
Meaningful, effective and equitable land reforms are urgently needed in many developing countries, which are facing a desertification crisis – to address land, poverty and food security in a holistic way.
Debates in and around the UNCCD are lacking this vital link.
Although we often listen the rhetoric about the importance of participation of stakeholders, particularly affected populations in decisions fighting against desertification, it is time that this issue be raised at the UNCCD and at a national level.
It is time we ensure real participation of farmers, tenants, pastoralists and landless agriculture laborers who are at the frontline in the fight against desertification.
Tanveer Arif, is CEO at Society for Conservation and Protection of Environment (SCOPE), an active NGO following UNCCD, since 1993
Neither it was the cloudburst nor the avalanche but the “glacier surge” that buried the men stationed at Siachen, Arshad H Abbasi, an expert on water and climate changes, told The News.
“Glacier surge is phenomena caused either by rise in temperature or some tectonic movement, where a glacier advances substantially, moving at velocities up to 100 times faster than normal,” he said.
Keeping in view the record of tremors occurring in the last one month, Abbasi insists that rise in temperature caused “the increase of melt-water at the base of a glacier that untimely reduced the frictional restrictions to glacial ice flow and transfer of large volumes of ice on Pakistan’s Army Camp.”
“The rising temperature is directly proportional with huge number of military presence in area. That is fundamental cause of melting glacier at an unprecedented rate,” he argued. “The actual retreat is not only evident by the snout of the glacier, but the real concern is the reduction of the glacier’s mass balance, which is the difference between accumulation and ablation (melting and sublimation).”
Having received the latest images of the glacier, Abbasi says it shows “visible cracks in the midst of glacier and above all the number of glacial lakes that have formed.”
‘Voodoo Science’ practitioners are justified in saying that Indian Army is playing pivotal role in global warming, causing the fast melting of Siachen Glacier.
Those claiming Siachen is melting due to global warming are advised to look into the report titled ‘Advancing Glaciers and Positive Mass Anomaly in the Karakoram Himalaya’ published by NASA. The report says of the glaciers in Karakoram, more than 65 percent are growing. They term abnormality as “Karakoram anomaly”. Therefore, it’s just a myth that Siachen is melting because of global warming, as it’s case of direct human interference, climate change.
During Track-II dialogues, Abbasi said, he had again been raising the question of the audit of Siachen Glacier to know the reduction of its volume, which was always declined by the Indian government. The climate change is by far the biggest threat ever encountered by humankind.
“It is time that the global leadership and community work with Pakistani and Indian leaders to save Himalayan glaciers by solving the longstanding Siachen dispute. This conflict is adding to environmental degradation, sea level rise and changing climate pattern but it is also depriving the poor of both countries of close to one billion dollars every year that these countries spend to maintain troops there,” he said.
Entrance to Siachen Glacier (Credit: news.kuwaitimes.net)
ISLAMABAD, April 11 — Pakistan and India’s military standoff in the frozen high mountains of Kashmir is not only costing soldiers’ lives, experts say — it is also wreaking havoc on the environment.
A huge avalanche on Saturday devastated Pakistan’s Gayani army camp on the fringes of the Siachen Glacier, where Pakistani and Indian soldiers brave bitter conditions to eyeball each other in a long-running territorial dispute.
Environmental experts say the heavy military presence is speeding up the melting of the glacier, one of the world’s largest outside the polar regions, and leaching poisonous materials into the Indus river system.
Faisal Nadeem Gorchani of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad said the glacier had shrunk by 10 kilometres (six miles) in the last 35 years. “More than half of the glacier reduction comes from the military presence,” he said.
Pakistani hydrologist and Siachen specialist Arshad Abbasi gave an even more alarming assessment of the glacier’s decline, and said that non-militarised areas had not suffered so badly. “More than 30 percent of the glacier has melted since 1984, while most of the Karakoram glaciers on the Pakistani side expanded,” he said.
Troop movements, training exercises and building infrastructure all accelerate melting, Gorchani said. Waste from the military camps is also a major problem, harming the local environment and threatening to pollute the water systems that millions of people across the subcontinent depend upon.
“Indian army officials have described the Siachen as ‘the world’s biggest and highest garbage dump’,” US expert Neal Kemkar said in an article for the Stanford Environmental Law Journal.
The report quoted estimates from the International Union for Conservation of Nature saying that on the Indian side alone, more than 900 kilos (2,000 pounds) of human waste was dropped into crevasses every day.
Kemkar said that 40 percent of the military waste was plastics and metal, and as there are no natural biodegrading agents present, “metals and plastics simply merge with the glacier as permanent pollutants, leaching toxins like cobalt, cadmium, and chromium into the ice.”
“This waste eventually reaches the Indus River, affecting drinking and irrigation water that millions of people downstream from the Siachen, both Indian and Pakistani, depend upon,” the report said.
Kemkar also warned the conflict had affected wildlife, with the habitat of animals such as the endangered snow leopard, the brown bear and the ibex — a type of wild goat — all threatened.
There is virtually no chance of any of the 138 people buried by Saturday’s avalanche being found alive, so they will likely be added to the list of those claimed by Siachen, dubbed “the world’s highest battleground”, with outposts more than 6,000 metres high.
An estimated 8,000 troops have died in the glacier’s freezing wastes since conflict over the area flared in 1984. Colonel Sher Khan, a retired Pakistani officer and mountain expert, says that not a single shot has been fired in anger in at least eight years and combat deaths in Siachen have numbered only in the dozens.
The rest have succumbed to frostbite, altitude sickness, heart failure and inadequate cold weather equipment — as well as avalanches and landslides.
Military experts quoted in local media say a Pakistani soldier dies around every three or four days in Siachen, and the latest disaster has led to louder calls for a negotiated end to the standoff, particularly given the huge expense of maintaining troops at such a high altitude.
The cost of the operation is kept under wraps but Pakistani daily newspaper The News reported that Pakistan spends $60 million a year on Siachen and India more than $200 million. In two countries where millions live below the poverty line this is a lot of money to defend an frozen, uninhabitable patch of mountain, but after nearly 30 years of stalemate, no-one is expecting a swift end to the dispute.
“It’s a matter of ego. Nobody is ready to take that step, even if they want it, because elections are coming,” said retired colonel Khan.
The soldiers facing each other across the icy, inhospitable mountain wastes have one thing in common, at least.
“India and Pakistan are not fighting each other in Siachen, they are both fighting the glacier, and nature takes its revenge by killing soldiers,” said Abbasi.
RECENTLY, a report titled Pakistan flood emergency: Lessons from a continuing crisis was prepared by a collaborative group of over a dozen leading international and national humanitarian aid agencies.
Victims of 2010 floods in Sindh Photo credit: AFP
It is a deeply saddening reminder that some 2.5 million people affected by floods last year are still struggling to return to normal life. The miseries of these citizens are going unnoticed, having been overshadowed by the political turmoil in the country.
According to the provincial disaster management authority’s official website, no flood affectees are living in camps any more. This masks the fact that they are still in dire need of food, shelter, drinking water, sanitation facilities and medicine. Thousands remain hungry and shivering in the unprecedented cold wave. The numbers that find space on official websites do not reflect any of these very grim realities.
The hardship being suffered by those affected by the floods does not end when they evacuate the camps; in fact, they return to their places of residence with nothing with which to resume their lives. In the absence of a robust early recovery plan, those affected by disaster find themselves destitute. The social ramifications of this can be very extensive and perhaps worse than the disaster itself.
Following the floods, the official appeal for international aid was inexplicably delayed; meanwhile, the humanitarian community’s lukewarm response means that there was insufficient support for relief. The loss of 2.2 million acres of crop lands and an estimated 116,000 heads of cattle has shattered the local economy in flood-hit areas.Fe
Sowing during the Rabi season following the floods was scanty, as more than 10,000 square kilometres of land in the seven worst-hit districts remained inundated, making ploughing impossible. These districts included the most fertile and crop-intensive areas: Sanghar, Mirpurkhas, Tando Allahyar, Shaheed Benazirabad and Tando Mohammad Khan.
In a Feb 17 update, the Sindh Disaster Management Authority acknowledged that over 1,200 square kilometres remained inundated. Further compounding the situation, the provincial government was unable to provide the promised package of seed and fertiliser to farmers. Of the 70,000 tonnes of fertiliser that were promised, only 23,000 tonnes were mobilised; administrative inefficiency meant that merely 9,000 tonnes actually reached farmers.
President Asif Ali Zardari took charge of matters by communicating directly with the district administration, but the impact of this move was diluted by political manoeuvring at the local level. From relief aid to cash support, availing anything required political connections. This left the poor of the province even further marginalised. There is little doubt that this will result in these communities becoming even more food insecure. Last year, some reports found malnutrition levels amongst women and children in rural Sindh similar to those in famine-hit Africa. The government failed to mobilise the international community for sufficient resources.
Meanwhile, the economic turmoil in the Eurozone and America, the competing demands of other disaster-hit areas, the compromised credibility of the Pakistani government machinery, restrictions on the mobility of international aid workers and the ineffective media coverage resulted in sluggish inflows of aid. The UN launched a $357m appeal last September but till Feb 10, hardly half of this sum had been mobilised.
Considering that over nine million people were affected by the floods, the hoped-for sum amounted to $66 per person. This is a very modest figure when compared to the appeal for $97 per person after the floods of 2010 in Pakistan, or $481 per person after the Haiti earthquake of 2010.
What compounded the situation further in Pakistan was the fact that key sectors of humanitarian response remained anaemic, which kept thousands of flood-affected people in limbo for months on end. According to a report by the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), the most under-resourced sectors are water sanitation and hygiene where 80 per cent of the needs remain unmet. These are followed by health, shelter and food security, where over 50 per cents of the people’s needs are unfulfilled.
Meanwhile, as most of the promises made by the government have yet to be kept, a significant amount of the sum earmarked for those affected by the 2010 floods have been diverted to other areas by the Sindh government. Of the sum allocated for the rehabilitation of flood-hit areas and communities by the Provincial Annual Development Plan, Rs8bn have been diverted to the development fund through elected representatives.
The government seems to be revisiting its priorities as an election year looms. The provincial government has chopped off some Rs4bn allocated for the construction of 40,000 houses and the provision of basic amenities in 200 flood-affected villages. This sum is now to be spent on schemes identified by elected representatives.
Such willful disregard for the plight of the flood-affected shows a lack of political commitment on the part of the provincial government. And that further hinders assistance by the international humanitarian community. The vacuum created in the absence of active governmental and international aid is being filled by faith-based groups. The penetration of extremist elements under the guise of humanitarian work is being under-estimated, and could hurt the relatively liberal social fabric that exists in Sindh.
The monsoon season is again just a few months away. Even a moderate shock this year would destroy the disaster management apparatus and ailing provincial economy that are already in a shambles. Disaster risk reduction and preparedness should be the top priority of the government, aid agencies and civil society. We need to develop early warning systems and emergency evacuation plans, repair infrastructure and start planning; the trajectory of the past year’s failures needs to be altered.
The writer is the chief executive of Strengthening Participatory Organisation.nmemon@spopk.org
Collecting and analysing accurate data is an essential part of disaster preparedness, but the relevant authorities here don`t seem to think so. In general, our attitude towards preparing for and managing disasters is ad hoc and shambolic.
This is quite troubling considering the fact that various parts of Pakistan are prone to seismic activity. For example, major earthquakes struck Balochistan in 2008 and 2011, while it has been reported that six minor quakes were recorded in Karachi in 2010, along with a few recent tremors. The devastation caused by the 2005 quake in northern Pakistan has still not been forgotten.
While it is true that after the 2005 quake there has been greater awareness about disaster management both in the public and private spheres, there is much room for improvement. For example, while masons have been trained in different parts of the country — through UN help — to build safer structures, building codes, especially in cities, are routinely flouted and structures not conforming to safety standards approved.
Also, earthquake drills in schools and workplaces are almost non-existent, though experts say that considering our seismically active neighbourhood such drills should be routine. It is better to be prepared now in order to minimise damage rather than grapple with the consequences of being unprepared when disaster does strike. For a start, the disconnected seismometers should be brought online immediately.
Jan 6, Islamabad: Pakistan is fulfilling more than 80% of its resources through imports although there are a variety of minerals, metals, coal mines.
Thar coal desert is the world’s third largest coal reserve. Energy crisis in Pakistan is increasing and with the passage of time it will worsen, as its requirements increase. With the decrease in energy production and its unavailability, the industries will have to face difficulty in future; therefore, it is important that the energy demands should be met to decrease power shortages and to save industries from facing any crisis.
The current power supply in Pakistan is around 1400 MW whereas the demand will increase by 100,000 MW by 2030. Considering this increase of power demand in 15-25 years, it is important that such policies should be made which not only take care of the current power demand, but also consider future power demand.
Pakistan is a self-sufficient country in minerals and coal reserves. The distribution of coal reserves in different provinces is as following.
Sindh has about 186.560 billion tonnes of coal reserves, Punjab 235 million tonnes, Balochistan 217 million tonnes, KP 90 million tonnes and Azad Kashmir 9 million tonnes of coal reserves. The total coal reserve in Thar is equal to 50 billion tonnes of oil reserve which is more than Iran and Saudi Arabia combined oil reserves or over 200 TCF of gas which is 42 times greater than total gas reserves discovered in Pakistan so far.
Considering the future energy demands, it is important that Pakistan should move towards coal reserves for electricity production as already many countries are doing so. Iran and china are producing electricity from coal. China is producing 75% electricity with coal. Poland and Germany produce around 80% of electricity from coal. South Africa 93%, India 78.3%, Australia 77%, America 49%, Denmark 47.3% and UK 32.9% produce energy from coal. Whereas Pakistan only produces 7% of total energy production while the energy production should be up to 25%.
The energy crisis in Pakistan is increasing day by day due to political hindrances and short reserves. Industries, agriculture sector, hospitals, schools several institutions demand power supply in order to operate and dwindling sources of energy are causing problems everywhere. This is also due to global energy crisis as fossil fuel reserves around the world are decreasing. Many scientists have predicted that energy reserves will end by the late twentieth century. That is several countries around the world have moved on towards alternative sources of energy.
It is time Pakistan moved on towards alternative energy sources as well. Wind and solar energy are alternative sources of energy. Germany is producing 18000 MW from wind. USA is producing 7000 MW and Spain is producing around 8000 MW from wind. Pakistan has points in the coastal areas of Karachi, Thatta, Jiwani, Balochistan and other areas situated in Northern Area and Kashmir from where wind energy can be generated. Solar energy is another source through which 90% of rural areas can be provided with electricity easily.
Energy has a direct link to economy of any country, as economic development relies heavily on industrial development which in turn relies on energy supply and demand. Economy is the backbone of any country. Pakistan should meet its current energy demands in order to reduce price hike and dwindling supply of gas which is currently creating problems for the people as well as for the current government which has not been able to meet the people’s demands.
There is an urgent need for starting up these alternative sources of energy for without resolving the energy crisis Pakistan cannot move towards economical development.
‘THE 2011 SINDH FLOODS: IMPACT, CAUSES AND REPERCUSSIONS’
Devastating floods of 2010 and Monsoon Rains of 2011 have completely changed the landscape of Sindh. There was a need to document the issues, reasons, impact and repercussions of these disasters. What monsoon rains 2011 and subsequently the calamity of floods have done to the socio- cultural and economic landscape of Sindh is very well explained in the essays, articles, news analysis, blogs, interviews and comments compiled in this book.
Foreword of the book is written by renowned development practitioner and scholar Arif Hasan. Publication of book is supported by HANDS. 350 pages book is published by Sindhica Academy Karachi. Book will be launched on January 14th, 2012 in Karachi.
Contributors of the book are Najma Sadeque, Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, Javed Jabbar, Sherry Rehman, Dr. Manzur Ejaz, Zofeen T. Ebrahim Dr. Sono Khangharani, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Ayaz Amir, Huma Yusuf, Ayesha Hasan, Rina Saeed Khan, Erum Haider, Azhar Lashari, Mohiuddin Aazim, Neva Khan, Noreen Haider, Ardeshir Cowasjee, Mishael Ali Khan, Afshan Subohi, Afia Salam, Sana Syed, Allison Zelkowitz, Dr. Shaikh Tanveer Ahmed, BZU, Shaista Aziz, Farooq Tirmizi, Jamil Junejo, Farooq Abbasi, Nasir Ali Panhwar, Syed R. Ali, Nasir Ali, Shaista Aziz, Mohammad Hussain Khan, Anam Tanveer, Murtaza Razvi, B.Khan, Salman Shah Jilani, Arshed Rafiq, Naseer Memon, Usman Qazi, Jawed Ali, Khan, Shahzad Raza, Ali K Chishti, Nuzhat Saadia Siddiqui, Salman latif, Naureen Aqueel, Amar Guriro, Faris Islam, Tahir Hasnain and Zulfiqar Halepoto
In this compilation, I have tried to collect a wide range of literature written on the different aspects of recent monsoon rains 2011 in Sindh, so that there should be a quality document available for the future use of researchers, development practitioners, organisations and scholars working on disaster related issues. This will also be helpful for a common reader to understand the causes of the disaster. I am of the view that documentation is a must to the past for the best planning for future. So this book is a humble effort to document the stories of worst disaster of contemporary history of Sindh and Pakistan.
Each contributor to this work has something outstanding to share. This compilation based on selected writings volunteers and offers a vision and strategies to the policy and decision makers and development sector working in Pakistan, to seriously review the lessons learnt from floods 2011 and do something to secure Sindh and rest of the disaster prone areas of Pakistan from any future threat.
Melting Glaciers in Himalayas (Credit: top-10-list.org)
THIS month’s prospective meeting of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue Group comprising seven states sharing the rivers rising in the Greater Himalayas would be a watershed event as the group is expected to adopt a joint initiative to minimise the impact of glacial melt.
The group comprises Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India and Nepal. All these countries share river basins originating from the water roof of the region — the Himalayas. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka account for more than 21 per cent of the world’s population but own barely 8.3 per cent of the global water resources.
This makes Chinese-controlled Tibet very important for South Asian countries. The water-rich southern Tibetan belt is the source of two major river systems, the Indus and the Brahmaputra, as well as of several other South Asian rivers. The 1,550km-long Sutlej which flows through India to ultimately drain into the Indus also originates in this belt, from the southern slopes of Mount Kailash. The flood plains of major rivers including the Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus and Meghna owe their sustenance to the Himalayan ecosystem and support life for over 1.5 billion people. The Ganges river basin alone is home to about 600 million people.
As the glaciers recede, significant declines in flows will become inevitable. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, by 2050 the annual run-off in the Brahmaputra is projected to decline by 14 per cent and the Indus by 27 per cent. The melting Himalayas pose a serious risk to the sustainability of water resources in the region.
South Asia with a large population base is susceptible to greater disasters in the wake of climate change. More than 750 million people in the region have been affected by at least one natural disaster in the last two decades. In May 2011, the secretary general of Saarc presented a draft agreement on the Rapid Response to Natural Disasters to an intergovernmental meeting of the organisation. He said that over the past 40 years, South Asia has faced as many as 1,333 disasters that have killed 980,000 people, affected 2.4 billion lives and damaged assets worth $105bn.
Very large populations in these countries owe their sustenance to water resources. Himalayan-fed rivers shape the economy
and society. Hence glacial melt could have catastrophic socio-political implications for the region. Regional cooperation becomes even more desirable in the wake of hydro-meteorological disasters.
By 2050, South Asia’s population is likely to exceed 1.5bn to 2.2bn. With more than 600 million South Asians subsisting on less than $1.25 a day, a single catastrophic incident could push millions into further poverty and misery. A major threat comes from the fast-melting Himalayas that dominate the monsoon dynamics in the region. The system is the lynchpin of the river network in the region.
Relentless glacial melt would also cause an ominous rise in sea levels. South Asia has a long and densely populated coastline with low-lying islands that are dangerously exposed to sea-level rise. The region has a coastline of 12,000km and a large number of islands. Hence snowmelt in the Himalayas makes the region highly vulnerable to an array of natural disasters.
Low-lying islands in the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are particularly in danger from rising sea levels. Major coastal cities like Chennai, Karachi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Cochin are exposed to increased risks of climatic disasters e.g. sea intrusion.
The fertile and fragile river deltas of the Indus, Krishna, Cauvery and Narmada are also vulnerable to sea intrusion. In fact, the Indus delta has lost almost two million acres of land to the sea. This would complicate matters for countries like Bangladesh, India and Pakistan that are already prone to devastating natural disasters like cyclones.
These facts make it quite clear that without regional cooperation for the management of our shared river systems and a common strategy on combating disaster, the region will continue to see all forms of hydro-meteorological catastrophes.
Saarc, the regional forum for cooperation, has yet to play an effective role in this.
Conventional security and regional trade issues normally dominate the regional cooperation discourse and tend to obscure other matters of relevance such as those of shared waters and a common front against disaster. The implications of climate change and related disasters for countries already exposed to natural calamities are reason enough to cooperate as a region to benefit and secure the lives of millions of people.
Information sharing, capacity building and prudent policies on shared water bodies are key to regional cooperation and can contribute to long-term plans to tackle the ominous effects of climate change. While almost every country in the region has developed a policy framework and strategies to mitigate and manage disasters on its own territory, in the years ahead intensive trans-boundary cooperation will become inevitable.
An important dimension in regional cooperation has been to bring China on board, as is seen in the composition of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue Group. The challenges faced by South Asian countries pertaining to shared waters, climate change and disasters are inextricably linked with China, as major rivers of South Asian countries originate from the Tibetan plateau. It is therefore of utmost importance that, along with boosting joint efforts among its own members, Saarc should also engage meaningfully with China on regional cooperation on water resources, climate change and disasters.
The writer is chief executive of Strengthening Participatory Organisation.nmemon@spopk.org
