ENVIRONMENT: Pollution Swamping Pakistani Lake People

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim*

KARACHI, Jun 8 2005 (IPS) - A kaleidoscope of a thousand scenes passes by, each as different from the other, as our narrow wooden ‘batelo’ lazily ferries past residents going about their daily lives, disturbing the peace with the whirr of its motor.

A woman washes her clothes, another takes a bath, yet another combs her wet hair, right next to where a mother is washing her infant.

Loud laughter and commotion draw our attention a little further. We spot a group of children playing in the water; one even points to the waterfowl in his hand to get our attention. Just then a boat, actually a shop, passes by with a man carrying half a dozen blue, plastic gallon bottles of water to sell. "That’s for drinking," points out our boatman.

It is a scorching hot day in May. We are in the Manchar Lake, Asia’s biggest sweet water, shallow (only three metres deep) natural lake.

They say it is sweet, and it may have been years ago. But this brownish liquid is salty and bitter now, as is the story of the area’s long-time residents, who are being displaced by increasing pollution of the oval-shaped body of water.

Situated about 18 kms from Sehwan Sharif in the district of Dadu, in Sindh, the lake is flanked by the Kirthar range in the west, Lakki hills in the south and the River Indus on its east. It is a sanctuary for a variety of exotic migratory birds that fly in from the north during winter monsoons.

Apart from the fact that Manchar supports a diverse ecological equation, it is also a storehouse for a rich cultural heritage – from man-made physical structures and artefacts to palaentological records in sediments. And yet, mystical as this may be, culture here is not static but constantly evolving, proving how water shapes the lives of humans.

Manchar culture also provides us with invaluable lessons and a peek into traditional water and land-use management practices of the indigenous fishing community – known as the mohanna – who for eons have lived on the lake.

Their houseboats, known locally as ‘ghalio’, are about 10-20 m long and 3-5 m in width. They have rudders, sails, a mast, and bamboo or flat oars.

The mohannas’ habitat, the water, is a whole new culture, distinct even from that of the nearby embankment area or the pier, where they go to sell their fish and buy water, or, a little further, the nearest village of Bubak, where they go to shop.

Here, life seems to have come to a standstill, as if you have travelled to a bygone era free from hurrying and scurrying. A woman wielding a bamboo staff quietly rows past, the fodder piled in her wonderfully hand-carved boat. Even the craft appears pre-historic with its flat bottom and narrow steep walls, like a scene from the Geographic television channel.

Life here seems ancient and timeless, only broken now and then by music playing on the radio or when a blue plastic water bottle intrudes on this canvas. Self-contained animal farms on the water include cows, goats, sheep, ducks, dogs and donkeys, all living in complete harmony.

But appearances can deceive. Today’s mohannas are fighting for their survival alongside the lake’s flora and the fauna, which face extinction because of the growing contamination of the water.

A modern barrage system and man-made drains have led to unchecked disposal of effluent and chemical waste from factories and cities in the north – the more populous and powerful Punjab province.

Many conservationists have long opposed the construction of the Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD), an outfall to divert drain water from the upper barrages and into Manchar Lake. With this, Manchar receives effluent and silt as well as saline water. Water from the lake, also a reservoir, is later released untreated into the Arabian Sea, posing a serious threat to the environment and marine resources there.

According to water experts, people who drink the Manchar’s water, which has a salt concentration of 4000 parts per million, risk water-borne diseases and even kidney and liver failure in the long term. The present drainage from the RBOD into Manchar should immediately be stopped, they argue.

In 2004, contaminated water from the RBOD flowing into Manchar Lake and then draining into the Indus River resulted in many deaths and hospitalisations due to an outbreak of gastroenteritis that affected thousands of people, mostly children, in Hyderabad.

For a number of mohannas, contamination of their ‘homeland’ has meant a major change in lifestyle, as they have had to sever their umbilical cord with the lake and move on to embankments, leaving behind their traditional occupation – fishing – to search for alternative livelihoods.

Nasir Ali Panhwar, a programme officer in the Sindh Programme of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Pakistan, blames the uprooting of these custodians of the lake on "ignorance of the importance of healthy wetlands coupled with a lack of coordination and an integrated and holistic approach between various agencies responsible for the management of these issues."

The long-standing issue of fishing rights of the indigenous people should be resolved, he adds. "Just like there is a land mafia, there is a very active water mafia here also, and the feudal lords among this community have earmarked areas, which they say belonged to their forefathers, and the poor must pay them a tax for fishing in their waters."

It is imperative that initiatives be designed to assist communities whose lives depend on the lake to help them to create innovative methods of managing resources instead of creating situations such that they have to be displaced, he added.

(*Zofeen Ebrahim wrote this story for the ‘Asia Water Wire’, a series of feature articles coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific around water issues in the region).