Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman said her ministry is drafting a national action plan on minimising use of plastics, which is one of the major causes of marine and land pollution.

She added that consumers would be incentivised to shun the single-time use of plastic shopping bags as all the previous efforts to end use of polythene bags had failed.

She made the remarks while addressing the inaugural session of a national consultative event titled ‘Plastic Free Rivers and Seas for South Asia Initiative’, organised jointly by the ministry of climate change and South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP).

Sherry Rehman said plastic pollution was totally a capacity issue, stressing that this issue could only be tackled if all the stakeholders took the responsibility of eliminating it once and for all.

She called for extending incentives to the end consumer to change their habits of using plastics.

The federal minister pointed out that the country generated about 26% of plastic, of which only 4% was recycled, while quoting studies in this regard.

Quoting a World Bank study, she said by 2050 there would be more plastics in oceans than marine life and Pakistan's oceans and rivers would be gravely exposed to plastic waste. 

Senator Rehman said that a project had been launched to clean litter from banks of the Indus River, adding that her ministry was also joining hands with Coca-Cola company to clean the Malir River in Karachi.

She pointed out that not all plastics are polluting and all of it is not recyclable, underscoring that entire narrative and science needs to be simplified to make people aware that they are ingesting plastics in the form of fish products as fish consumes plastics from rivers and oceans.

She said people’s nutritious cycle is polluted as every food item has plastic contamination one way or the other.

The minister said an effective approach was needed to find out a remedy as most of the households in Pakistan are unable to adopt alternatives. “South Asian economies have thrived on plastics because the alternatives are expensive as even upper income households cannot afford that.”

Sherry Rehman mentioned that environment and climate change had not been part of public dialogue in South Asia, including Pakistan, and urged the climate technocrats to devise ways where the poor have an affordable solution or alternative when they are asked to shun using plastic bags.

The minister called for punishing the tourists littering the country’s mountainous areas. “Littering in the rivers can be and should be penalised and provinces should join hands in this regard."

She pointed that the world’s temperature was going to rise by three degrees Celsius by the end of the century, and that the countries had to start preparing for it.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk