Daily Times

It will be a breath of fresh air for all of us living across Pakistan if we would become a mainstream helping hand for the agencies working with the core objective to tackle environmental problems. It’s a fact that the humans are responsible for everything relating to harming or safeguarding the environment. If we sincerely want to provide our future generations with a healthier environment, we will have to make sure that our everyday activities must be environment-friendly.

If we are not willing to contribute towards this remarkable step for securing Pakistan from the devastating environmental threats, one day, everything will be tattered,and we would never perceive the natural beauty around us anymore.

Pakistan has been witnessing some serious environmental problems over the years, which include climate change, deforestation, land degradation, soil erosion, pollution and natural disasters. Though these all problems are interlinked with each other, these all do have significant effects on every living thing, which are enough to make us realise how defencelessly we are dealing with our environment.

Many prominent governmental, as well as nongovernmental environment protecting organisations,have been working in the country for a long time with the aim to overcome this threat but instead of appreciating their work, we have been critical of these organisations.

Thousands of mobilisation and sensitisation sessions become ineffective when the same community keeps following the detrimental coping practices to harm the environment on the very second day of the deliverance. Of course, we have other economic and social issues too which force the rural communities living in far-flung areas of the country to carry on their affairs without any environmental concern.

What could an environmental protection organisation do if the communities themselves are not cooperating sincerely to lend a hand in protecting the environment they live in?

Shockingly, the concept of rural life in Pakistan has changed its route. Rapid urbanisation and introduction of latest technologies to transform rural lifestyle into urbanised one have invited more environment hazards to surround our already disturbed lives.

UNDP’s Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Programme has been working in the country since 1993 to overcome Pakistan’s environmental problems. It has successfully implemented around 274 projects, as its website tells, with the collaboration of local community-based organisations (CBOs/NGOs).At one end, a breathable environment can be provided to everyone where humans, animals and plants can survive for a longer period while on other, the programme has been eyeing on the provision of a mitigation strategy.

If someone has brought some comfort in the lives of miserable masses of the country, it’s UNDP’s Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Programme. Right from Azad Jammu & Kashmir to undeveloped and remote villages of Sindh’s coastal belt, the organisation has been engaged with local CBOs/NGOs to uplift living standard of locals through introduction of environment friendly home appliances, lighting up centuries old dark villages through fostering alternate source of energy (solar system), conserving threatened animal and plant species through alternative livelihood resources to the people involved in damaging practice of such species, promoting social forestry in the towns and rural areas of the country, and rehabilitating the affected masses of natural disasters etc.

The writer is an environmentalist and freelancer based from Badin, Pakistan and can be reached at abbaskhaskheli110@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, March 12^th 2018.