As an inescapable concomitant with the traditional route of economic development, Pakistan has been facing natural resource degradation and pollution problems. The unsavory spectacle of air pollution, water contamination and other macro environmental impacts such as water logging, land degradation and desertification, are on rise. All this, in conjunction with rapid growth in population, have been instrumental to the expanding tentacles of poverty. In order to assess the environmental problems as a prelude to arrest the pace of degeneration and provide for sustainable course of economic development, the availability of adequate data is imperative. This publication is an attempt to provide relevant statistics compiled through secondary sources collected from different departments.
The task of environmental data collection does not consist just in determining the frame and approaching the selected sources of information because environmental statistics per se do not exist as a ready-to-compile/pick category as generally perceived about data and statistics. The information on environment has generated through deliberate scientific observations and measurements in a consistent way, under the aegis of specialized agencies. Since it is skill and resource intensive pursuit and generally undertaken in public sector, the overall budgetary/financial constraints do take the toll of the canvas and continuity of environmental data generation down the time lane.
Consequently, availability of the statistics falls short of desired level. Further, the studies pertaining to normal over a period of time are repeated after long time intervals, which may not conform with the quinquennial periodicity of this document. Similarly, many variables antecedental, associated with and, consequential to, environment are derived from population census, which is yet to be carried out even though the stipulated decennial time frame has long been overstepped.
Nevertheless, the latest update of the compendium is a good attempt to mirror quite a few environmental factors as a means to raise awareness and help stay focus on the pivotality of environmental concerns for instituting sustainable development paradigm-the only way forward to ensuring the continuity of human race on the face of planet earth.