Earthly matters: Support system

Triggered by heavy monsoon rainfall, flash floods have inundated large areas of Pakistan yet again while experts point to the need to restore wetlands that have slowly been eaten up by agricultural land, buildings and housing estates due to Pakistan’s rapidly expanding population.

What exactly are wetlands? Pakistan is a signatory to the international Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (1971), which defines wetlands as: “Areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static, flowing, fresh, brackish or salt …”. Pakistan has around 225 globally significant wetlands, out of which 19 are designated as Ramsar sites under the Ramsar Convention. While efforts have been made in the past, especially by the Pakistan Wetlands Project to protect the Ramsar sites, what has been ignored is the overall important role of wetlands in flood control. Wetlands actually contribute to the maintenance of water quality of both surface and underground water supplies, abatement of pollution, flood and erosion control.

“For flood control we only focus on the hard engineering solutions; bunds, weirs, embankments, dykes and not on overall flood management. We don’t value wetlands that can absorb the excess floodwater. Wetlands are also home to migratory birds and provide an important habitat for fish”, explains Syed Mahmood Nasir, the Inspector General of Forests at the Ministry of Climate Change in Pakistan. “The expansion of agricultural farms is killing off our wetlands. The problem is that no one is looking after them. Wetlands protection is currently not included in the organisational mandate of either the Wildlife or Forest Departments or even WAPDA”.

Overall flood management entails hard engineering solutions plus management of wetlands
WWF-Pakistan estimates that man-made and natural wetlands in Pakistan spread over approximately 10 per cent of the country. Lakes, canals, dams and lagoons formed as part of Pakistan’s extensive Indus Basin Irrigation System are classified as man-made wetlands. Natural wetlands, whether permanent or seasonal, exist as peatlands, rivers, streams, lakes, marshes, estuaries, mudflats and inter-tidal areas. Pakistan’s wetlands occur in a broad variety of ecological zones including arid, semi-arid, alpine and coastal areas.

In 2012, a Ramsar Advisory Mission came to Pakistan upon the invitation of the Climate Change ministry (after the super floods of 2010 had submerged large parts of the country). “The mission told us that wetlands are better than 10 Kalabagh Dams; they are a low cost way to store freshwater and recharge underground water. The Chinese members of the mission even invited us to visit the Yangtze River where they are destroying the embankments to restore wetlands”, explains Nasir. The Ramsar experts identified sites from where floodwater from the Indus could be drained during flooding. Their main point was that floods could be seen as a boon and not a bane. Not only do they regenerate the aquifers, they also restore all the polluted lakes and ponds across the country. After the 2010 floods, the heavily polluted Manchar Lake came back to life and since the toxins were flushed out, the fish have returned.

Nasir proposes that we plan ahead and design a low cost system of ponds (unlined) to take the floodwater out to dry areas where underground water can be recharged as suggested by the Ramsar experts. “Basically we need to make wetlands in dry lands to store water”. For example, there is Pattisar Lake in Cholistan, which has completely dried up and excess floodwater could be directed to this lake.

Pakistan government experts are now planning a trip to go to China to visit the Yangtze River Basin management plan developed after the massive floods of 1998 killed thousands of people. In Pakistan’s current fourth National Flood Protection Plan, a section on mapping floodplains, restoring the watersheds and the forests upstream has been included. In the past, billions were spent on hard engineering solutions while low cost solutions were often ignored.

Aside from wetlands, Nasir points out that the riverine forests that once flourished adjacent to our rivers and which also played an important role in flood control have been decimated in Sindh, whereas in Punjab, bunds next to the river have cut off the forests. “Despite being on the banks of a river, these trees are dying from thirst. We are just not looking after our riverine forests properly”. Realising the importance of flood plain management and the restoration of ecosystems and forests in climate mitigation, a section on establishing a separate wetlands management authority has been included in the 2015 Federal Forest Policy.

This was done upon the insistence of the new Minister for Climate Change, Mushaidullah Khan who Nasir says understands the importance of establishing a wetlands authority. “Without this, we cannot achieve the objectives of the Ramsar Convention”, says Nasir. “Wetlands in this country cannot be healthy when they are nobody’s responsibility. Many other countries have separate Wetlands Management Authorities”.

The recent global focus on climate change has revealed that wetlands can and do mitigate significant consequences of climate change. These include sea-level rise, increasing frequency of destructive storms and flooding. As Nasir puts it, “given climate change, where one year’s average rainfall is now falling in just one day followed by prolonged dry periods, forestry in Pakistan without healthy wetlands is unthinkable”.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 9th, 2015
Source: Earthly matters: Support system