Pakistan Qualifies as Better Cotton Country

Pakistan becomes the first country to qualify as Better Cotton Country. Environmentalists while talking about major cotton growing countries like Pakistan, India and Brazil make a point by saying that these nations are exporting there fresh water at a very cheap rate.
About a decade ago, WWF-Pakistan started a very small cotton project in 3 villages of district Vehari to educate farmers to reduce the use of agro-chemicals and irrigation water.
By December 2005 WWF-Pakistan was able to convince IKEA’s top management in Helsingborg, Sweden to support this sustainable cotton production program, meetings with APTMA, FAP, PCGA and the Seths of Gul Ahmad, Chenab, Al-Karam were also held to promote the program and gain local and international support.
This field project also provided the foundation and demonstration to come up with Global Cotton Standards; the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) with 4 pilot regions (Brazil, Pakistan, India and Central Africa). BCI was registered in Switzerland and BC Guidelines were approved in 2009 with the aim to produce BC from the 2010 cotton season.
Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), Rabo Bank and brands like Levis, M&S, H&M, Adidas came on board as support partners of the project in a textile conference held in Colombo earlier this year....
In 2010 under the Better Cotton Project WWF-Pakistan worked with 40,000 cotton growers covering more than 160,000 ha. The whole team worked extremely hard on making this project/dream a reality and the result is that around 45,000 MT of project cotton has been qualified as ‘Better Cotton’ through the BCI process of ‘assessment’ and ‘verifications’. This BC will be consumed by local ginners and spinners for international buyers. But this is just a beginning and I hope that this will act as further inspiration to continue our hard work.”
The project is also significant as it introduced very sustainable and eco friendly pesticides and pest control techniques.
Bitter melon was used for creating an all organic pesticide. sweet timber sticks were inserted in the fields to attract termites on them, which were later removed from the fields....
Farmers have bene able to cut down to about 30 % on there water and have saved about $ 400 appx on agrochemicals and water....

Flood in Pakistan a man made calamity

The number of causalities and the vast devastation brought with floods of 2010's monsoon in Pakistan are sad and shocking and we should support the victims as much as we can. Every one was very happy when the rains started during the mid of July and had no idea that these rains would lead to divesting natural calamity in the coming weeks. Calamity we may say but can we really call it natural? and if floods are a natural phenomena then there must be a solution in place for them by nature.
It seems so bizarre that humans who pretend to know the best act so ignorantly towards nature, mostly never considering the consequences.

Floods in Pakistan like every where else in the world are natural, but the destruction and damage caused by them is almost always man made. Accounts of the Indus river from the times of Alexander's campaign indicate a healthy forest cover in the region, which has now considerably receded. The Mughal Emperor Babur writes of encountering rhinoceroses along its bank in his memoirs (the Baburnama).

Extensive deforestation and human interference in the ecology of the rive banks has led to deterioration in vegetation and growing conditions. The Indus valley regions are arid with poor vegetation now. Massive deforestation of the KATCHA initially under the British Raj and then by the common man and Pakistani government has lead to an almost non existent flood buffer....in fact massive human settlements have sprung all over what was 30 miles of Jungle on each side of river Indus. This massive jungle on river banks was commonly know as KATCHA in Sindh and Punjab, and acted as a flood buffer with thousands of natural dips in the elevation of its scape. During monsoon all the KATCHA area would come under the flood which would contain it to a great extent, slowing down the water spill to the agricultural flood plains. Even until 1870's most of the agriculture done on the agricultural flood plains was done after the flood water started seeping out of the KATCHA. Thus human settlements were obviously protected by these two natural buffers, the KATCHA & the agricultural flood plains. The jungle on the river banks would also release its organic content to the agricultural flood plains making them fertile.

The banks of river Indus should be declared as conservation land and the human settlements should be moved inland, the conservation areas should be reforested with man made water containing dips or pockets.... undoubtedly this would be a plan which would be executed by generations of Indus dweller, but this is the only natural solution because even a 100 dams cant contain the mighty Indus....

Above Image: Notes from field by Imran who is part of the Pakistan Wetlands Programme of WWF - Pakistan.

2600 years old living fossil saved by photovoltaic

With the installation of 3600 watts of photovoltaic at the remote village of Bara Zizri in Ziarat district of Baluchistan Pakistan, there is hope for the second most ancient Juniper forest on the planet. With one of most fragile ecosystems in Pakistan, the forest has an extremely slow growth rate and faces very harsh climatic and geophysical conditions. The forest ecosystem has important wildlife species and medicinal plants. The main threats are debarking and cutting trees for fuel wood and other uses by the local communities.

Now with the help of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), PCRET (Pakistan Council of Renewable Energy Technologies) has installed photovoltaic to produce 3600 watts of renewable electricity that lit up 120 households, 6 schools and 6 mosques in the area.... this should reduce the pressure on the forest. 17 local woodcutters have also been trained to manage the photovoltaic panels and the electric supply, giving them an alternate livelihood.

More on IUCN's efforts...

More about the ancient forest.....

Plastic bags ban in Pakistan

Following the foot steps of Zanzibar and other nations of the world like China and Israel the newly elected Pakistani national assembly agreed upon banning the use of plastic bags for grocery and other daily use commodities. Mr. Riaz Fitiana an opposition member presented the bill for the ban on 22nd of April 23, 2008 for a vote which was not only supported by the federal Minster for environment Mr. Hameed Ullah Jan Afridi, but was also approved by majority of members of the national assembly.
This bill of ban on the use of plastic bags should bring a considerable difference in not only pollution altogether but should also reduce the sight pollution, as these plastic bags make 80 % of the litter that can be seen on the streets all over the country.This bill also suggested the use of biodegradable shopping bags, and insists on the government to take an initiative for bringing these bags to the market and the consumer.