Talk highlights Sindh govt’s apathy towards climate change, environment

Among the Sindh government’s various departments dealing with environment and climate change, the forest department has been consistently spending funds on development projects. During the past 16 fiscal years from 2008-2009 to 2023-2024, it has spent Rs9.894 billion against the allocated budget of Rs12.789 billion — 77 per cent of the allocation.

In contrast, the environment department spent only 10 per cent of the allocated budget during the last 16 years, as against the total allocation of Rs3.419 billion, the expenditures amounted to Rs336.56 million.

The spending by other climate-related departments remained similarly low. The coastal development and wildlife departments spent only 43.91 per cent and 42 per cent of their respective budgets during 16 years.

This was stated during a discussion on the provincial climate budget that was held by a research and analysis startup, The Citizenry Karachi, in collaboration with the Climate Action Centre on Monday.

Journalists and researchers Oonib Azam and Sadia Siddiqi shared the findings of their investigative story about the climate budget and discussed the issue with key government officials.

The discussion was technical, involving a plethora of statistics, but Sadia started it on an interesting note by explaining some key ideas about the budget. She said that the entire budget document comprises several books, but what the finance minister chose to majorly discuss in the budget speech in the assembly was Book 5 of the budget, which is about the Annual Development Programme (ADP).

She explained that the ADP is also called the “development budget” because it is where funds are allocated for development projects. She added that the ADP, especially at the federal level, is also called the Public Service Development Programme.

At the start she praised the Sindh government for making the budget information available for the public in a convenient manner. She said that all the budget information can be accessed on finance.gos.pk, pointing out that the provincial website is better than the federal website carrying the budget details.

She said that even PC-1 of the projects can be accessed through the provincial website. However, she advised researchers to download the PC-1 of the projects they are working on because some of the PC-1, like the one of the Gujjar Nullah rehabilitation scheme, have disappeared from the website.

What followed the initial remarks, however, did not go in favour of the Sindh government, as the journalists highlighted how the provincial administration keeps on underspending on climate projects and there seems to be no coherent policy guiding its climate projects. Sadia shared that in order to deal with heatwaves in Karachi, the government formed the Karachi Heat Management Plan in 2017. She asked if people know about the plan or if it is part of the public discourse right now, when the city is facing extremely high temperatures.

They also highlighted various projects, such as the one for restoring lakes in the province, which were once part of the ADP but no money was spent on them and they were silently removed from the ADP in one of the budgets.

After sharing the findings of their story, the journalists spoke to some key government officials online. While Sadia and Azam had censured the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) for spending less than a fourth of its budget, a PDMA official countered that the authority has been spending a much larger portion of its allocated budget.

What marred the discussion, particularly for this scribe, was the frequent allusions to the flyover and expressway projects as a symbol of the government’s apathy towards climate change.

The government can surely simultaneously build flyovers and concentrate on addressing climate change. Some flyovers in the city might not have been necessary, but building flyovers is not inherently in opposition to taking action to improve environment, as it was being conveyed during the discussion.