Sepa organises training session for smart environmental management practices

The Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) organised a training session in collaboration with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Pakistan on “Environmental Monitoring and Smart Environmental Management Practices (SEMPs)” on Wednesday and Thursday in Karachi and Hyderabad respectively.

According to the organisers, the main objective of the training was to enhance the acumen of field assistants, field supervisors and environmental inspectors of Sepa regarding smart environmental management practices in order for them to review their procedures and practices pertaining to environmental monitoring and sampling methodologies.

Sessions were held in accordance with the recently signed memorandum of understanding between Sepa and the WWF as the MOU envisaged applying internationally adopted labour environmental standards in the industrial sector of Sindh.

According to the MoU, WWF-Pakistan would provide technical support to the Sindh government through capacity-building, high-tech equipment provision for measuring ambient air quality and helping it to run a mass awareness campaign at the provincial level. These capacity-building sessions were a stepping stone in this direction.

Komal Naeem, senior officer, WWF-Pakistan, said that under the project, titled ‘International Labour and Environmental Standards (ILES) – Application in Pakistan’s SMEs’, WWF Pakistan intends to implement better environmental management practices in the industries in order to improve the capacity of the public sector to implement Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and national environmental laws and standards in Pakistan.

She elaborated that the project involves building the capacity of the textile and leather sector to adopt to Smart Environmental Management Practices (SEMPs) in order to efficiently use water and energy resources and reduce the use of hazardous chemicals by 15 to 20 per cent. The environmental inspectors act as the backbone of the department since they perform sampling, testing and impact assessments for different industrial units and projects. With the recent proceedings of the Water Commission, trainings like these would help Sepa inspectors to put forth their stance in a logically and scientifically justified way.

Arjmand Qayyum Amjad, coordinator ILES, WWF-Pakistan shared a detail overview on Environment and Climate Change in context of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) signed and ratified by Pakistan. He said that the textile and leather sectors represent the largest domain of the industrial base and play a key role in the country’s economy. He shared that these industries are resource intensive where large amounts of water, energy and chemicals of different classes are used, contributing to an overall increase in pollution levels in the country.