We are the most bizarre nation to have existed on this planet. Imagine the worst thing and we would have done it – without regret. In 1960, we signed the unfair Indus Waters Treaty and later destroyed the country’s largest freshwater lake, the Manchar, in district Dadu of Sindh.
In October 2013, the Supreme Court of Pakistan took suo motu notice of Manchar Lake’s destruction. An inquiry report was sought from Wapda by the then chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry. After a lapse of several years, it was last year in March that a two-member bench of the court took up the case again. The bench issued directives to at least provide clean drinking water to the over 100 villages located near the lake, through RO plants.
With Syed Murad Ali Shah the chief minister of the province, there was hope, because he hails from the same area where the lake is located. There was hope that he would take a personal interest in restoring the lost lake. But the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), the Friends of Indus, other civil society organisations, environmental experts and some local activists have gone unheard and unnoticed. The lake’s water remains contaminated, hence, unfit for human consumption. However, the nearby villagers are being provided drinking water through RO plants.
Spread over an area of 320km, but 500km during peak flood season, the Manchar was carved out by the British in 1930 – around the time the historic Sukkur barrage was being conceived and constructed. The lake had two sources of water flowing into it, one was the Indus River and the other was the mountains along the Sindh-Balochistan border. The dams and barrages built on the Indus River gradually reduced the water flow to the lower riparian region, which eventually affected the Manchar.
Under the Convention on Wetlands, also known as the Ramsar Convention – named after the city in Iran where the treaty was signed – the Manchar Lake is a protected wetland. The treaty is an international convention that provides a framework for conservation of wetlands. The Manchar Lake is among Pakistan’s 19 Ramsar wetland sites. Sindh is home to 10 such protected wetlands including the Keenjhar and Haleji lakes in Thatta district.
Water distribution in Pakistan is done without any consideration for nature – perhaps an alien concept to the Pakistani ruling elite. For decades, Sindh’s demand to release water downstream Kotri into the sea has not been given importance. Experts and technocrats from the upper riparian region believe releasing the water is tantamount to wasting it. Neither do they take into account the sea intrusion that has gradually encroached upon the fertile lands of Thatta and Badin, nor do they realise that the mangrove forests spread over miles also need water. There has been no recent study or survey conducted to determine how much of the coastal districts’ agricultural land is now under the sea. The last study and survey carried out several years ago quoted a figure of 2.2 million acres of land. The geographical land mass of the Keti Bandar city has been twice encroached upon by the sea; Keti Bandar is the third city to have been affected. The people keep shifting the market area and their shops towards the inland.
Lake Manchar was the only source of livelihood for over 10,000 households, including the Mohana (fishermen) community that lived in 2,000 boats moored in the lake. They had an entirely different culture and lifestyle. But with the discharge of poisonous water from the Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD), a project of Wapda, the Mohana community lost everything, their life, culture and source of income. No one ever bothered to offer compensation to them, or look into the lake’s contamination
Letting freshwater lakes be destroyed is a crime against people, nature and biodiversity. Nobody has the right to snatch from the people their livelihood, the culture of their forefathers, their graveyards or homes or villages. Our country’s political leadership, be it civil or military, has remained occupied with their own political agendas. We keep wasting and throwing away our natural assets.
Managing water resources, including water bodies like Manchar Lake, is the prime responsibility of the irrigation department of Sindh. The Sindh government has shown utter negligence in protecting freshwater lakes. Instead of restoring the Manchar, the Sindh government recently commissioned the construction of the Nai Gaj Dam, blocking another critical source of water to the lake. When was the last time we saw a prime minister of the country visit these places, express his pain and apologise for contaminating the 320km-long lake, a nature’s gift.
Lakes are natural water reservoirs which help irrigate lands and sustain ecology. The Manchar was home to thousands of migratory birds from Siberia and other colder regions of the world. The lake’s contamination is a classic example of a man-made disaster. Instead of helping people develop new sources of employment and livelihood, our policy choices have also deprived them of what they had held dear for centuries.
This is who we have become. After contaminating a natural lake, we supply our populace with water through RO plants. This supply too gets interrupted, pushing villagers to take to the streets in protest. A committed government that has a sense of what is at stake can help restore this lake and give back to the Mohana, the thousands of migratory birds and their lost paradise.
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