All our tomorrows

Few would even know what biodiversity was, and it barely gets a mention anywhere in the national school curriculum

Biodiversity is rarely at the top of any agenda, be it provincial or federal. It is, therefore, heartening to note that there is inter-provincial support for the revised draft of the National Biodiversity, Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP). Few if asked would even know what biodiversity was, and it barely gets a mention anywhere in the national school curriculum. Outside the relatively small circle of climate and environment professionals and activists, it is unlikely to be widely discussed. Yet discuss it we must because Pakistan is losing biodiversity hand over fist. The various ecosystems are all under threat in varying degrees either because of bad management or reckless development and next to nothing is being done to stem the decay. The NBSAP agreement may be the instrument that puts the brakes on the downward slide, but this is the second attempt to address the matter in the last 15 years, the first having been a dismal failure.

The Ministry of Climate Change and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) were the agencies that brought the key players together in a workshop that rebooted the national drive to preserve biodiversity. There are now 20 targets that all have been agreed upon and it now remains to be seen how well or ill the plan is implemented at local levels. The reason for the failure of the first attempt to preserve the environments that we all live in was linked to a lack of a clear mechanism of coordination between the provinces and the federal government — something that bedevils development across the entire spectrum. Institutional capacity was weak in respect of biodiversity, and while natural events can be catastrophic across the range of biodiversity, much of the damage was the result of human activity. Much as we welcome this development, there must be fears that it will suffer the same fate as the previous attempt to preserve the bubble in which we all live. There are few votes and precious little money in biodiversity, and the provinces are only on board because it is a ‘neuter’ issue — nonetheless we wish the initiative well.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2015.

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