‘Poor governance compounding climate change challenges’ in Pakistan

Faiza Ilyas in Dawn.com (Pakistan): Poor governance and lack of natural resources’ management have intensified the gravity of challenges posed by climate change as the vulnerable communities living along the country’s coastline are the most deprived in terms of basic needs such as water, education, health and economic wellbeing, said speakers at a programme organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (WWF-P) in collaboration with its project partner LEAD Pakistan.

They stressed the need for an efficient institutional mechanism at the union council level to address problems being caused by climate variability. The event held under a five-year project, ‘Building capacity on climate change adaptation in coastal areas of Pakistan’, was held to launch two studies — Socioeconomic baseline of Pakistan’s coastal areas and Negotiating known unknowns: ‘better’ climate adaptation practices from the Indian Ocean basin.

...Sharing some salient features of the research on the socioeconomic baseline of coastal areas, Ali Dehlavi, the study’s co-author representing the WWF-P, informed the audience that the coastal areas of Kharo Chan and Keti Bunder located in Thatta district and Jiwani in Gwadar district had been selected for the research.

The communities in these coastal areas, he said, lived in abject poverty and were deprived of the most basic necessities of life. “Of the three sites, Kharo Chan showed the highest incidence of poverty as measured by the national poverty line, with nearly 50pc of households earning Rs50 per day or less. More than 40pc and 20pc of our sampled households at Keti Bunder and Jiwani, respectively, fall below the poverty line,” he said....