Most environmental deterioration has occurred in the world since the industrial revolution, said Roland DeSouza, an engineer himself by profession and an active member of Shehri - CBE. He was addressing a seminar on "Engineers and the Environment" organised by the Institution of Engineers Pakistan (IEP) Karachi Center to apprise its members of environmental issues and responsibilities of the engineering community in Pakistan.
Roland DeSouza, in his detailed presentation highlighted the issues of global environmental degradation due to excessive use of natural resources, growing population and unplanned development all over the world. Citing reports of various international organisations, he claimed that most environmental deterioration has occurred in the world over the past 250 years - since the industrial revolution and charged that no others except the engineering community's activities caused the deterioration.
He said various countries of the world were facing various kinds of environmental issues due to one or environmental collapse factors, including deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems including erosion, salinity, fertility losses, water management problems, over-hunting and fishing, population growth but unfortunately all these collapse factors were present in Pakistan.
Presenting various charts and graphs, Engr De Souza said worlds population increased to 6.9 billions from a few hundred millions and that was causing an unprecedented load on the world's natural resources, which were diminishing as compared to their consumption at a lot higher pace.
On the occasion Sindh Secretary Environment Mir Hussain Ali who was invited as the panellists at the seminar told the participating engineers that government was introducing environment as subject in schools' curricula to emphasise its importance. He deplored that municipal authorities as well as other state institutions were not performing their responsibilities with respect to environment and added that environment department was facing shortage of manpower that was hampering its performance.
Renowned columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee, who was the chief guest at the presentation in his remarks deplored that government policies show a shocking lack of knowledge and disinterest in environmental issues and urged common citizens to rise to the challenge and should not wait for the government to act.
Supporting Roland DeSouza's presentation, Cowasjee said engineers have steadily increased standard of life in the world at the cost of creating environmental issues and asked them to play their role now in mitigating the issues created due to their own wrongdoing by ignoring development's impact on planet earth.-PR
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