World Water Day arrived this year with Pakistan issuing a warning that should not be mistaken for ritual diplomacy. In his message on Sunday, President Asif Ali Zardari urged India to restore the full implementation of the Indus Waters Treaty and condemned what he called the “deliberate weaponisation of shared water resources”. His choice of […]
under siege
Under Siege
The Sutlej has been battering Multan, Bahawalpur and Lodhran for over a month, yet the water shows little sign of receding. In some localities, entire hamlets remain marooned under eight feet of stagnant water. Relief camps are overcrowded, disease is spreading, and schools that might have doubled as shelters lie in ruins. These pages have […]
Indigenous peoples, ‘guardians of Nature’, under siege
From Amazon rainforests to the Arctic Circle, indigenous peoples are leveraging ancestral knowhow to protect habitats that have sustained them for hundreds and even thousands of years, according to a landmark UN assessment of biodiversity released Monday. But these “guardians of nature” are under siege, warns the first major UN scientific report to fully consider […]