Daily Times

Lahore’s distinction as the cultural capital of Pakistan may be well known but it’s also infamous as a den for playing havoc with mother nature. If the sporadic smog crisis wasn’t enough, a latest study conducted by Britain’s University of York declared the Ravi River as the most polluted river globally.

Certain pharmaceutical drugs, caffeine and other toxic waste have reportedly been found in the river which implies the level of danger for surrounding settlements. On the other hand, the government is adamant to develop a riverfront development project on Ravi’s basin which might generate economic prosperity but the environmental cost would be insurmountable.

Pakistan is already amongst the most water-stressed countries in the world which are at the brink of drought and famine if sustainable measures aren’t taken under the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to contain the impending consequences. One of the key reasons is a population boom which resulted in horizontal developments of unplanned nature to emerge in some instances that caused higher environmental damage.

Ideally, vertical housing and corporate developments should have been promoted with countermeasures in place in case of natural calamities such as earthquakes.

While national and provincial legislations such as National Water Policy and Punjab Water Act are in place, they mostly look good on paper given the nature of inefficient and corruption-ridden governance. Lahore’s groundwater is already at a critically low level and any further misuse of scarce resources shall prove detrimental.

Other cities such as Karachi have their stories to tell which point out how resources are mismanaged. It all points towards a crisis which has the potential to lead to a civil conflict or even military skirmishes with India over scarce resources.

While Prime Minister Imran Khan is amongst the leading voices globally when it comes to tackling climate change, his stance on Ravi’s urban development project needs immediate reconsideration for the sake of ecological factors. *