Will 2009 Be the Year of the Environment for Pakistan?

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Amid rising tensions with neighboring India and dealing with a resurgent Taliban along the Afghani border, Pakistan’s government is also launching a different kind of campaign – a green one.

Pakistan’s Environment Minister Hameedullah Jan Afridi has finalized a calendar of events for the upcoming year; officially deeming 2009 Pakistan’s “National Year of the Environment.”

In a press conference, Minister Afridi urged international bodies, non-governmental organizations, provincial governments and the private sector to actively participate in making 2009 an environmental success. However, the question still remains whether this is Potemkin-environmental policy or the real thing.

The government-sponsored activities of Pakistan’s National Year of the Environment include the screening of environmental documentaries, panel discussions and dialogues, planting of 10 million trees in a day to surpass a world record, seminars, exhibitions, essay-writing competitions, and walks. Throughout the year, the calendar is littered with awareness days, weeks, and months, in an effort to educate Pakistan’s citizens about the ecological consequences of their individual actions.

While Pakistan should be applauded for their efforts, their praises should not go unqualified.

Pakistan has generally given a relatively low priority to environmental protection. A critic might say what is missing from the year’s big plans are more thorough efforts to enforce Pakistan’s 1997 Environmental Policy Act and provide more support to the underfunded Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency.

But since the establishment of the sweeping Environmental Policy Act of 1997, Pakistani environmental policy has veered towards using the kind of market-based mechanisms preferred by the outgoing Bush administration. Major investments in the agencies and programs that oversee environmental protection in Pakistan would be a major change in direction for the government.

The commitments made thus far by the Pakistani government are much more educational and symbolic, than substantive in their scope. I fully recognize that when it comes to creating effective environmental protection and policy, education and awareness are critical components. But equally critical to that effectiveness are rules, organizations, incentives, and deterrents that are best provided by governments – not markets.

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