Sindh: Dying lake victim of industrial discharge

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Amar Guriro
KARACHI: Nararri Lake, an important natural lake of Sindh located in district Badin is close to what is termed as ‘dried dead’. The lake is home to several dozens of fresh water fish and was a bird watchers’ heaven having flyway zone of dozens of migratory birds from Siberia, Russia and other cold countries

Polluted with poisonous and untreated industrial effluent of surrounding industries, its fish population has drastically decreased and it has lost the identification of birdwatchers’ paradise since migratory birds no longer arrive at the spot.

Another significant fact about the Nararri Lake is that it is a Ramsar site. Ramsar is an international convention for the conservation of wetlands throughout the world. It was named after Iranian city Ramsar where the Convention on Wetlands was signed in 1971, is an intergovernmental treaty. The agreement provides the framework of related government and other authorities’ action for the conservation, proper use of wetlands and the resources. About 158 contracting countries to the convention, with 1822 wetland sites, totaling 168 million hectares, designated for inclusion in the Ramsar.

In Pakistan there are total 19 Ramsar sites out of which nine sites located in Sindh alone. Nararri is one of these sites. That was hub of the fishing activities and was only source of income for hundreds of indigenous fishermen and also being flyway zone it was heaven for birdwatchers in the past. But increasing pollution has turned the lake dead. The lake is located in the Badin district that is supposed hub of non-government organisations (NGOs) that get funds from international donors such as World Bank, ActionAid, US Aid, UNICEF and several other agencies but no one has bothered in the past even to challenge the pouring of polluted water into this Ramsar site.

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has decided to carry out a detailed survey of the lake to ascertain the causes, levels of damages and vanishing fish types. “Five major industries have recently started pouring untreated poisonous industrial waste in this lake that has badly affected the ecosystem of this important natural lake of Sindh,” said regional director Indus for All Programme, WWF Dr Ghulam Akbar.

Nararri Lake or Jubho Lagoon was receiving fresh water from River Indus but recently, the decreasing supply of fresh water in the downstream of Kotri Barrage, the most important barrage on the River Indus, has badly affected the water supply to this lake. “Due to the lack of fresh water supply from River Indus, the freshwater fish have completely vanished, after fish make their into this lake from sea during high tide, but the poisonous effluent have completely killed them,” Dr Akbar said.

Talking about the importance of the lake he said that in the past the lake was a flyway zone where tens of thousands migratory birds from cold countries were making their short stay to escape the cold and also being a source of food. “The situation of the lake has badly affected the food source and these migratory birds have stopped visiting this lake and have changed the site somewhere else for their temporarily stay,” he said, adding that reducing fish has badly affected indigenous fishermen communities. In the past several hundreds of fishermen were completely depending on this natural lake.

“The importance of the Nararri Lake could be gauged from the fact that the lake had fulfilled the basic requirements of lengthy requirements of Ramsar convention and despite being signatory of the convention to conserve the wetlands, Pakistani government has not taken steps for the protection of this important site,” he said.

Beside these local NGOs, those international organisations working for better environment and nature’s conservation have also not taken any step to save this important wetland. “We have initiated a study recently to collect how this lake has suffered in fresh water scarcity and pouring of contaminated industrial effluent,” said Dr Akbar.

Badin is also home of oil exploring activities where several international oil exploring companies are working and Pakistani laws bound these companies to spend some of their profits for the conservation of local natural resources, but none of these companies have also bothered to take any practical steps.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...008_pg12_5