ISLAMABAD, SEP 10 (DNA) — Coordinator to Prime Minister on Climate Change, Romina Khurshid Alam on Tuesday said that Pakistan regularly experiences seasonal flooding, especially during the monsoon season, which poses significant risks to human life, property, agriculture, and infrastructure.
But, managing this excess water can help overcome the risks and prove a boon to the country’s socio-economic development, she added. Addressing a launching ceremony of the ‘Recharge Pakistan Programme’ as chief guest here Romina Khurshid Alam highlighted that the present government is concerned over wastage of excess floodwaters during summer monsoon season, which gush down the country’s river system untapped for want of for various reasons, particularly inadequate storage facilities in the country.
She further that addressing this concern of the Prime Minisetr Shehbaz Sharif, the Recharge Pakistan programme is being launched by the climate change and environmental coordination in collaboration with different national and international stakeholders to building country’s flood resilience through nature-based adaptation for integrated flood risk management and conservation of excess flood water so as to utilise it for meeting growing water needs of domestic, industrial and agriculture sectors.
Managing floodwater through the Recharge Pakistan Programme would be a crucial step for several reasons, as it would help protect lives, property, the environment, infrastructure from the devastating impacts of flooding and help recharge the groundwater level, she contended. The PM’s climate aide said, “Recharge Pakistan is basically an unique collaborative initiative as it would be implemented by different national and international development partners in close collaboration with the climate change & environmental coordination ministry, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Sindh and Balochistan governments.
Explaining about the interventions to be carried out under the Recharge Pakistan Programme, Romina Khurshid Alam said that among other key flood risk management measures, wetlands would be restored for storing excess floodwater and green infrastructure interventions would be conducted in the Indus Basin for sustaining the exacerbating risk of floods and retain excess floodwater for irrigating agricultural and community lands by slowing run-off.
This would significantly help cope with the country’s flood-caused climate vulnerability through nature-based adaptation interventions and integrated flood risk management, she added. Over the last century, the country’s average temperature has spiked by 0.57 C and the average annual precipitation has increased by 25 per cent, aggravating the flood risk, particularly during summer months, she highlighted.
As a result, there has been a substantial increase in the occurrence of devastating floods, landslides and drought events, which are surpassing the capacity of the country’s existing water infrastructure to stave off any massive economic damages and loss of human life, Alam added.
The Indus River is experiencing floods with increasing intensity and frequency.
The communities along the Indus, including upstream watersheds and downstream wetlands and floodplains, are disproportionately vulnerable as they depend on the river for food and water as well as their agriculture, livestock and fishing-based livelihoods. “However, the Recharge Pakistan would be a major flood risk prevention initiative and boost the country’s water storage capacity and improve groundwater resources to meet galloping population, agricultural and industrial needs,” the PM’s climate aide highlighted.
More importantly, by means of an integrated flood risk management approach, involving the restoration and rehabilitation of water flow paths connected to wetlands and irrigation water supply channels and the development of recharge basins and retention areas, the project would directly benefit an estimated 680,000 people and indirectly support more than seven million people, most of them in flood-prone rural and marginalized communities, PM’s climate aide said.
On the occasion, Senior US Embassy official said that the US government, Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and CocaCola were jointly collaborating for the programme which was the first ever large-scale project by the partners and government of Pakistan.
The initiative was bringing a paradigm shift from concrete-grey to green infrastructure like earthen water ponds and water bodies (wetlands) that would rehabilitate watersheds with a unique approach from working in the upstream to slow down waterflow in the watershed areas to conserve water and generate green jobs that would help support 680,000 individuals directly by securing their lands, jobs and livelihoods and some 700,000 people would benefitted after the implementation of the project.
The project sites included watershed area Ramak in D.I. Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Chakar Lehir in Sindh-Balochistan and Manchar Lake and combinedly all these would help 14,000 hectares forested areas restoration, conserve GHG emissions that would help meet NDCs targets of Pakistan, he said. “In mitigation, so much money is consumed but adaptation is a slow and longterm approach to handle climate change. This is the unique initiative where government, international climate finance and private sector will yolk together,” the US official said.
Recharge Pakistan was a $77.8 million value five-year project involving US government, WWF, Coca Cola and Green Climate Fund (GCF) which comprised of $1.8 million from WWF, $5million from Coca Cola and additional $5 million from US Agency for International Development (USAID) and $66 million from the GCF which was part of the overall $5 billion US funding to GCF.
“Its groundwater recharging initiative and the people should consider it like a battery that needs to be recharged to ensure survival of human life that uses a science-based approach to capture the rainwater, filter it and return back into aquifer which can used for agriculture, wetland restoration and other purposes,” he said. —DNA
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