Speakers discuss city’s environmental concerns

Depletion of natural resources, nuclear power plants discussed

KARACHI: The Rabita Forum Inter-national held a seminar at Regent Plaza to apprise students of environmental concerns on Tuesday.

During the seminar, titled 'Environmental Aspects of Karachi', speakers talked at length about the issues of waste water management, depletion of natural resources and the development of the K2 and K3 power plants.

Sindh Environmental Protection Authority (Sepa) director-general Naeem Ahmed Mughal cited wastewater management as the city’s largest environmental concern. He added that up to 2,000 tons of solid waste is produced per day in Karachi. "The collection capacity of this solid waste is only 30 per cent and there is also a lot of unsafe disposal of hospital waste."



According to Karachi University (KU) environmental studies professor Waqar Ahmed, Karachi is blessed with huge reserves of natural resources. "In KU alone, there are 430 different species of plants and 40 rare bird species not found anywhere else in the city."

Regarding the K2 and K3 nuclear power plants, Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology environmental research group head Dr Azhar Mashiatullah said they are a safe option for Karachi. "Nuclear fuel has small energy consumption with its renewability amounting to thousands of years as compared to coal's 200 years and natural gas’ 25 to 50 years." According to him, only three nuclear power plant accidents were reported worldwide in 1969-2013 as opposed to 1,221 of coal and 297 accidents in oil power plants.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2015.