Neglected wetlands

Pakistan has 225 wetlands, constituting of marshes, lakes, rivers, swamps and other areas, which cover 780,000 hectares of land or about 10 percent of the land area. Yet, as the Minister for Climate Change Mushaidullah Khan pointed out while addressing a recent seminar on World Wetlands Day, there is little awareness about the significance of these areas. These wetlands can play a leading role in protecting the environment, offering biodiversity, fishing grounds and helping in flood control by absorbing water. The minister emphasised the role of wetlands in floods, given the devastation Pakistan has suffered from these in recent years. But the question the full-fledged ministry should be asking itself is why such limited awareness exists. Nineteen of the sites in Pakistan are Ramsar sites, protected under the 1971 Ramsar Convention on wetlands, to which Pakistan is a signatory. But this does not appear to have inspired it to do very much.
The Pakistan Wetlands Programme, initiated in 2005 and due to run for 12 years, is little known and poorly publicised. Independent organisations such as the WWF have been far more successful in involving citizens in protecting the mangrove forests that line our coastal areas, though of course there is a lot that remains to be done in this sphere too. For the most part we have acted against wetlands, cutting into swamps in the name of development, or callously polluting lakes and rivers. This of course is an environmental disaster. Experts have already warned that Pakistan is running out of water resources. Linked to this we have a wider environmental disaster, with wetlands being rapidly lost. To save them we need to create far greater awareness, involve young people and work towards a safer future. Rapid population growth and urban growth also have a negative impact and policies that embrace all these factors must be put in place if we are to save our land from the environmental ruin it currently seems to be headed towards due to years of indifference.