Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Geography Pakistans Case Study Pakistans Case Study The Severity and Extent of Environmental Scarcity in Pakistan Pakistan, which means "land of the pure", is a predominantly Muslim state located in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent. Extending from the northern Himalayan mountain ranges one thousand miles down to the Arabian Sea, it is bounded on the northwest by the mountain ranges of Koh Sulaiman and by Afghanistan and on the southwest by the Iranian section of Baluchistan. In the east, Pakistan is separated from India along the Sutlej River, the deserts of Rajasthan, and the Rann of Kutch; and a cease fire line dividing the Kashmir Valley separates the two countries in the north. The country has a total land area of approximately 310,322 square miles, much of which consists of desert and mountainous regions. Yet the river system of the Indus and its tributaries has provided Pakistan with some of the most fertile and best-irrigated land in the Indian subcontinent, and a majority of the population lives along its banks. Frequent, occasionally severe earthquakes occur in the northern and western regions, while flooding plagues the Indus valley after heavy rainfall. Agriculture is the nation's principal occupation, employing half of the country's population and accounting for 25 percent of its GNP. Wheat, cotton, rice, barley, sugarcane, maize, and fodder are the main crops. In addition, the western province of Baluchistan supplies a rich crop of fruits and dates. The industrial sector is growing and employs over 20 percent of the formal workforce. Key industries include textiles, construction materials, sugar, paper products, and rubber. Mineral resources are modest. In addition to oil and gas reserves, Pakistan has deposits of uranium, coal, sulfur, chromate, limestone, and antimony. The state has four constituent political units: the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the provinces of Punjab, Sind, and Baluchistan; a number of tribal areas are also administered by the federal government. Of the provinces, Punjab is the most populated and agriculturally rich, followed by Sind. Baluchistan, which is primarily desert, is sparsely populated, while much of the NWFP is also barren and predominantly tribal in character. The physical diversity of Pakistan's provinces is more than matched by the complex ethnic and cultural composition of the general population. The chief ethno linguistic groups are Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans, Baluchis, and a significant population of Muhajirs - Urdu-speaking refugees and their descendants who migrated to the country en masse following the partition of the subcontinent and the country's independence in August 1947. The dominant language is Punjabi (the first language of 65 percent of the population), followed by Sindhi (11 percent), Pushto (8 percent), and Urdu (9 percent). Gujarati, Sahraike, and Baluchi are among the languages of other ethnic minorities. English is generally spoken in business circles and in government. Islam, the state religion, is practiced by the vast majority of the populace. Muslims make up 97 percent of the population (77 percent Sunni and 20 percent Shia), while Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians constitute the remaining 3 percent. In theory, Pakistan is a federal polity, committed to Islamic religious principles and parliamentary rule. The executive consists of a prime minister, who heads the government, with a president acting as chief of state. The legislative branch is bicameral and consists of a popularly elected National Assembly and a largely advisory Senate, elected indirectly by members of the provincial assemblies. Yet the "practice" of truly democratic and representative politics has proven elusive. Nonelected institutions hold sway over their elected counterparts, and the state has long been dominated by a military and bureaucratic elite dedicated to advancing its own interests largely to the exclusion of those of society at large. The contours of Pakistan's "bureaucratic-authoritarian" state emerged soon after independence in 1947, as the challenges of nation building threatened to overwhelm the modest resources of the newly created country. Almost overnight, enormous social dislocations arising from partition, pressing defense requirements, and the need to assert authority over newly acquired and disparate territories confronted the state machinery with demands it could not meet. Partition had yielded Pakistan 18 percent of the population, 17.5 percent of the financial assets, less than 10 percent of the industrial base, and slightly over 7 percent of the employment facilities of an undivided India. Organizational machinery was inadequate - particularly in the regions the regime acquired - and the largely migrant political leadership had little direct contact or rapport with the indigenous population of the lands it inherited. The pressing need to consolidate territory and defend the nation prompted a rapid expansion of administrative machinery and wholesale adoption of the colonial British "vice regal" system of administration and resource management. This system had been long geared to maintaining law, order, and the collection of revenues on behalf of the British Empire. It included a professional civil service with a deep knowledge of local conditions as well as great access to and influence over provincial populations. It was an effective tool - and one readily available to the new Pakistani regime - for augmenting state revenues and financing burgeoning defense budgets. Military influence within the society expanded apace. The outbreak of war with India over the northern princely state of Kashmir only months after independence, lingering doubts over provincial loyalties to the newly formed state, and the internal dislocations and communal conflicts that attended independence all gave the military a critical role in the creation and maintenance of the state. Defense spending became a top priority and - along with the cost of civil administration - accounted for more than three-quarters of the federal government's budget during the first decade after independence. This spending was soon supplemented by western aid, as Pakistan adopted the role of junior guardian of the Persian Gulf in the Cold War. Yet there was little corresponding effort to ensure the supremacy of elected institutions within Pakistani society. Administrative/bureaucratic influence over the state rapidly increased, and democratic institutions decayed. By the late 1950s, the civil-military bureaucracy had consolidated its hold on the government, and the country settled into a mode of state rule that remained largely unchanged for the next three decades. A succession of military and civilian regimes followed, and while each professed some commitment to greater political participation, all ultimately fell short of popular expectations. Elites often opted for a controlled form of democracy; they saw politics less as a participatory affair than as something to be steered from above. Land. Pakistan comprises 88.2 million hectares of land, of which 61.8 million has been surveyed. Approximately 20 million hectares is used for agriculture, while some 31 million hectares is forest, rangeland, unutilized, or unutilizable . Since independence, the area of land under cultivation has increased by approximately 40 percent. Yet today the country is approaching its physical limits. Of the total surveyed land area, less than 20 percent retains the potential for intensive agricultural use, while 62 percent is classified as having low potential for crop, livestock, and forestry production. Overall, land categorized as cultivable represents less than one-quarter of the country's total area. Today, nearly all of this land is already under cultivation. Very little additional land is available for the expansion of agriculture. Shortages of arable land do not, of course, preclude an increase in agricultural production. Practices such as double-cropping, increases in labor productivity, and better technical inputs (such as new grains) can boost agricultural output. But a number of forces have combined to prevent the realization of the country's full agricultural potential. These include poor water management practices (which restrict double-cropping), a system of absentee landlords, the fragmentation of landholdings, the reduction in farm size from generation to generation as farming populations rise, poor access to agricultural capital, poor technology transfer to farmers, and a lack of information concerning the use of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides The heavy use of fertilizers particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, has also left soils deficient in a number of nutrients essential to plant growth. Soil maps of the central-western region (an area representing approximately 40 percent of the country) reveal land affected by light water and wind erosion, a loss of topsoil, and some terrain deformation. In the southwest and along the southern coastal fringe west of Karachi, wind-eroded and salinized soils predominate. Desert soils, highly salinized soil, and some severely eroded areas are found along the Indo-Pakistani border, and soil in the lowlands of the Indus River valley also suffers from salinization. Meanwhile, lands in and around the northeastern tip of the country are classified as "stable" under normal conditions. The most important causes for reduced land productivity are water and wind erosion, salinity and sodicity, waterlogging, flooding, and loss of organic matter . According to the government's Report on the Pakistan National Conservation Strategy, percent of surveyed soils (which include most of the soils usable for agriculture, forestry, or ranching) are affected by water erosion, 7.6 percent by wind erosion, 8.6 percent by salinity and sodicity, and 8.6 percent by flooding and ponding; fully 96 percent suffer from less-than-adequate organic matter. These problems often occur simultaneously and produce synergistic impacts on agricultural productivity. Soils can suffer from both water and wind erosion, and poor organic-matter content is universal, reducing the potential productivity of the best as well as the worst of soils. Water. An arid and semi-arid country, Pakistan's water sources have always been limited. The country has regularly experienced critical water shortages, which lead to power blackouts and also to inadequate supplies of irrigation water for the main crop-growing season. To compensate, a finely balanced system of water management for irrigation, electricity, and industry has been developed. The system is shaped in part by the Indus Waters Treaty. Signed in 1960 by India and Pakistan following long-standing water disputes, the treaty gives Pakistan control over the Indus and its western tributaries the Jhelum and Chenab, while India controls the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej branches in the east. The treaty also allowed Pakistan to construct two large storage and hydroelectric dams: the Tarbela on the Indus and the Mangala on the Jhelum, as well as a system of smaller dams, inter river canals, and irrigation canals. This irrigation network now services about 16 percent of the country and is one of the largest such systems in the world. As much as 65 percent of agricultural land is irrigated, accounting for about 90 percent of the country's food and fiber production. Approximately 175 billion cubic meters of water enters the Indus Basin annually. Of this, 128 billion cubic meters is diverted for irrigation purposes to the canal heads, while remaining water flows to the sea. Although this flow to the sea is needed to maintain a viable river ecosystem, especially in the Indus estuary, experts agree that much of it could be stored for irrigation. Yet, Pakistan currently lacks the necessary storage capacity, in part because of heavy silting of reservoirs,. The absence of this water is one of the factors preventing the nation from attaining food self-sufficiency. The existing irrigation system is also highly inefficient. Of the 128 billion cubic meters diverted for irrigation, about 52 billion cubic meters is lost to seepage and evaporation from canals and watercourses. This loss is a major cause of waterlogging and salinity of soils in the Indus Basin. Vertical pumping systems used for drainage are proving unsustainable: the recycled water contains chemicals that produce sodicity and reduce the life of pumping machines. No serious effort has been made to develop a drainage system to parallel the irrigation system. In Punjab alone there are about 280,000 tube wells pumping 51 billion cubic meters of water and using about 2,400 megawatts of subsidized power. One hundred million metric tons of salts have been pumped up in the process. The salts have decreased crop productivity in 1.2 million hectares of prime land in the Canal Command Area, which is about 5 percent of the total agricultural land in Pakistan. Another 2.1 million hectares of salt-affected lands exist in Punjab's non-sweet water areas. The result is lower crop productivity. Beyond the Indus Basin, sharp drops in the water tables of underground aquifers - of 15 centimeters to over 60 centimeters (cm) per year - are occurring in a number of areas. The water table in the Northern Basin of the Quetta Valley is falling at the extraordinary rate of 200 cm per annum, while the Southern Basin has registered a yearly decline of 60 cm. The groundwater table in Lahore is falling at a rate of 30 cm per year in the central part of the city due to excessive withdrawals by a growing urban population.67 An inadequate sewage treatment infrastructure adds to problems. Many of Pakistan's rivers are now badly polluted with domestic sewage and industrial waste. A recent study of the Kabul River (near Peshawar) reveals that parts of the river and some of its tributaries have become open sewers.68 Much of this polluted river water is used for drinking and irrigation. In fact, inadequate drinking water represents a long-standing and serious problem in several parts of the country.69 It is increasingly common to see people in many parts of the country walking for kilometers to fill a container with water.70 Forests. As legally defined by the government, areas designated as "forests" include both natural and plantation forests, as well as areas with closed forest cover and open cover; the definition even includes some territory with little tree cover. Clearer are the designations of "production" and "protected" areas offered in the Forest Act of 1927. Production forests are used mainly for the direct material products of their growth. They have a high tree density and, in most instances, a closed tree canopy. They represent the chief source of timber and currently make up 27.6 percent of total forest area. Protected areas are largely intended to guard against soil erosion and today account for a full 72.4 percent of total forest area. Such distinctions have nonetheless done little to prevent the decline of forest areas generally. Over the past 75 years, forests have decreased from 14.2 percent to 5.2 percent (4.57 million hectares) of Pakistan's total land area, with less than 3 percent currently under tree cover. Closed cover forests account for under 1 million hectares. Efforts at afforestation and watershed management have not kept pace with increased demand for timber and excessive cutting and overgrazing. Between 1974 and 1985, timber supplies from state forests declined by 45 percent, in part because of reduced forest area. The total loss of forest occurred at a rate of 0.4 percent from 1981 through 1984 and has now decreased to 0.2 percent per annum. This figure translates into the destruction of 7,000 to 9,000 hectares of forested land every year. Today, Pakistan imports about 30 percent of the timber it uses. The heavy deforestation stems from a number of factors. During both the colonial and the post independence periods, entrepreneurs took over and commercially exploited large forest tracts to satisfy the demands of a growing rural and urban population. With the development of canals, hundreds of thousands of hectares of riverine, scrub, and forest land in the Indus plains were cleared for agriculture. Energy demand also has increased pressure on the forests. Wood currently meets approximately one half of national energy requirements. Annual consumption now stands at an estimated 19.70 million cubic meters and is expected to rise to 30.66 million cubic meters by the year 2000. According to the 1980 housing census, approximately 70 percent of all households in Pakistan relied upon wood for cooking and heating, with dependence reaching 80 percent in rural areas. Given continuing high population growth, reports of a further rise in timber demand for cooking and heating are hardly surprising.79 The negative consequences of uncontrolled forest exploitation are ever more obvious. They include serious soil erosion and sedimentation, desertification of once-productive upland areas, the silting up of waterways in the plains (making them more prone to flooding), and marked scarcities of fuelwood and building timber (creating an economic burden on low-income communities). The decline in tree cover has already resulted in a large reduction in watershed and reservoir efficiency. Except for a small headpond with daily storage capacity, Pakistan's important Warsak Reservoir - built in 1960 - is now completely silted up. The water's silt burden has caused serious wear on all rotating parts of the reservoir's hydroelectric generating station, and the main powerhouse structure is suffering from alkali-aggregate reaction. Efforts at watershed management should lengthen the life of more recent projects, such as the Mangela and Tarbella Reservoirs; yet reports indicate that, even in these cases sedimentation is occurring at a rate which could render them inoperative in as little as forty years. These processes have major implications for the availability of water for irrigation and power generation. Indeed, some experts predict large deficits of water and electricity in the future, with considerable impact on agriculture and the economy. According to the World Bank, while less than 10 percent of Pakistan's hydroelectric potential has actually been exploited, further development is heavily constrained by silting. Nevertheless, projected stagnation in growth of supplies of natural gas Pakistan's chief energy source - is likely to heighten demand for electricity. Energy supplies have been growing at 7.2 percent per year, while demand is increasing at 8.3 percent annually, and the country has already experienced serious loadshedding due to electricity shortfalls. The effects of flooding are even more salient. Floods have not only produced loss of life and property, but also serious damage to irrigation networks, crops, and transportation and communication systems and utilities. Between 1973 and 1978, a succession of floods in Punjab and Sind affected over 12 million people and over 8 million hectares of land and destroyed an estimated 70 percent of the total standing crop. More recently, in 1992, landslides, accelerated soil erosion, and large quantities of felled, unclaimed timber moving down the Kunhar, Siran, Daur, and Jhelum Rivers in Hazara resulted in widespread destruction of lives and infrastructure. According to a report released by the Sungi Development Foundation, the felled timber: destroyed approximately 30 to 35 water mills on the banks of the Kunhar River in the Kaghan Valley, demolished bridges used as links between remote villages and commercial centers, damaged much needed sources of irrigation, and wiped out precious agricultural land.88 Resource Capture and Ecological Marginalization Accompanying widespread supply-induced, demand-induced, and structural scarcities is growing evidence of resource capture and ecological marginalization in the agricultural and timber industries and in urban areas. The Green Revolution. The introduction of green revolution technologies in Pakistan contributed to resource capture. Launched in the early 1960s, the revolution was an attempt to increase agricultural production to meet the rising food demands of a growing population. In short, it was launched as part of an effort to address real and impending resource scarcities within the nation. Application of these new technologies - which combined high-yield hybrid grains with greater use of fertilizers and irrigation - improved agricultural performance and increased grain output. However, the economically efficient use of these technologies demanded particularly large tracts of agricultural land. Consequently, the green revolution favored large, well connected landowners. Not only could they exploit the new technologies to maximum effect, but the revenues generated from their use enabled large landowners to take over additional land for cultivation. Farmers with smaller land holdings were eventually bought out, and many became landless. Those with medium-sized holdings (3 to 10 hectares) were hit especially hard. Indeed, census data for 1960 to 1972 in Punjab Province (where green revolution technologies were most widely adopted) reveal that the new technologies resulted in a polarization of farm-size distribution: the percentage land area of large and small farms increased, while that of medium-sized farms declined . Motivated by the potential profits of green revolution technologies, large landowners resumed self-cultivation of land previously rented out to both small- and medium-sized farmers. The latter suffered disproportionately because a higher percentage of them were tenant farmers. The result was a shift of farmers from the lower-medium- to the small-farm category over the inter-censual period. Polarization in farm size also contributed to landlessness among the poor peasantry. According to Akmal Hussain, census data reveal that 794,000 peasants - 43 percent of all agricultural laborers in Pakistan in 1973 - entered the category of wage laborers from 1961 to 1973.98 Many of these peasants were evicted from their land during the process of change ushered in by the green revolution. In short, concern over resource scarcities, the structure of Pakistan's agrarian economy, and new agricultural technologies combined to increase the incentives and opportunities for rural elites to appropriate, or capture, cropland, in the process increasing the number of small holder and landless peasants. Many were forced to move to other areas in search of employment, with small towns and cities receiving the largest share of the migration. The Timber Mafia. The exploitation of Pakistan's forests exhibited a similar process. While deforestation has a long history, rates have been particularly high over the past decade, in large part because of rising demand for fuelwood. Land management and property rights legislation have failed to ensure adequate regulation of the forest industry. In many cases, strong urban and rural groups have appropriated both community and government lands for themselves. According to a recent report published by the Pakistan Administrative Staff College in Lahore, a "timber mafia" - a term coined to describe persons and groups having a commercial interest in rapid forest exploitation -is now ravaging Pakistan's dwindling forests. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, individuals used large transfers of state development funds to open up forest areas for exploitation. Road and electrification programs facilitated commercial cutting while reinforcing the political and social control of tribal leaders over indigenous populations. Thereafter, the collusion of forest officials, large forestland owners, and contractors allowed timber extraction to proceed with little significant regulation. The Chitral District in the NWFP is an example of such activity and its effects. The felling and smuggling of timber has been a constant source of irritation for the Kalush ethnic minority who reside there. Yet efforts to stop these practices have often been weak and unorganized and have at times prompted retaliation from timber interests. In one case, a Kalush leader survived an attempted murder, while his brother was killed after filing a court case about timber, grazing, and land rights in Rumbur Valley. Meanwhile, over harvesting of timber by colluding special interests continues in the Kalush valleys, causing migrations of villagers from high mountain pastures to valleys and of young people to cities in search of work. The districts of Malakand and Hazara have experienced similar problems. Bibliography: . Thomas Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases," International Security 19, no. 1 (summer 1994): 5-40; Jack Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991). 2. , Norman Myers, "Environmental Security: The Case of South Asia," International Environmental Affairs, 1, no. 2 (spring, 1989): 138-154. 3. Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Scarcities," 8-9. 4. ibid page 104. 5. Manzooruddin Ahmed, "Introduction," in Contemporary Pakistan: Politics, Economy, and Society (North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 1980), 3. 6. Ibid. 7. Arthur S. Banks (ed.), Political Handbook of the World: 1994-95 (New York: CSA Publications, 1994), 661. 8. Ibid., 664. 9. Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (Lahore: Sang-E-Meel Publications, 1995), 23. Word Count: 3793
Copyright © 2005 College Term Papers, INC All Rights Reserved.