Disturbing findings: Illicit wildlife trade jeopardising biodiversity

‘WWF-P committed to promoting <br /> sustainable development’.

LAHORE: Worldwide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (WWF-P) director-general Hammad Naqi Khan said on Tuesday that illegal wildlife trade had been negatively impacting Pakistan by compromising the country’s biodiversity.

He was speaking to journalists at an event held to release the foundation’s 2014 Living Planet report.  Khan expressed concern over the increasing smuggling of black scorpions, freshwater turtles and pangolins. He said rising deforestation constituted another threat. Khan said the fund was striving to overcome these challenges. He said it was committed to supporting sustainable development in Pakistan. Khan said rising deforestation had endangered species like the common leopard by comprising their habitats. He said Pakistan’s carbon footprint had been consistently getting larger. Khan said a World Bank report on air pollution had ranked urban air pollution in Pakistan as severe. He said this had negatively impacted public health, quality of life, the environment and the economy in Pakistan.

The report stressed the importance of adopting environmentally-friendly solutions to counter rising threats to nature. According to the report, it was imperative to adopt these measures urgently as an alarming decline had been witnessed in wildlife populations. The population of fish, reptiles, birds, mammals and amphibians had declined by 52 per cent over the 40 year period surveyed in the report. The decline in biodiversity witnessed in the Asia-Pacific region was second over the period only to Latin America.

The report highlighted the consistent increase in the ecological footprint. The footprint is a measure of humanities’ demands on nature. According to the report, a marked rise was witnessed in Pakistan’s footprint due to population growth, growing per capita consumption and declining biodiversity. It particularly mentioned climate change, fishing, hunting, habitat loss and degradation as the greatest challenges to

Published in The Express Tribune, October 1^st, 2014.