As global average temperatures rise beyond 2 degrees Celsius - a highly likely scenario based on current trajectories - the volume of Himalayan glaciers will be halved.Īctivists gather outside the office of the Environmental Protection Agency in Lahore on Decemin protest of issues including the Ravi River Urban Development Project. Most of Pakistan's rivers are fed by melting snow from glaciers in the Himalayas, which are set to shrink as the world heats up. These short-term solutions, however, will run up against the climate clock. Cleaning up the Ravi could help Pakistan forestall an impending water crisis - its basin is home to some 50 million people and the river irrigates about 7 million acres of land. According to a government study last year, only 39% of water sources across 29 cities were safe for drinking. In recent years, Pakistan has developed legislation to regulate water use amid warnings that the country will face water scarcity by 2025. For decades, the river has collected untreated sewage from Lahore, as well as industrial and agricultural waste. A water-sharing treaty with India has limited its flow, while Pakistan's own mismanagement has exacerbated the problem. The Ravi river was instrumental to Lahore's development, but today large pockets sit stagnant while other sections have dried up completely. Pakistan's leaders have been trying to develop the banks of the Ravi for almost a decade and Prime Minister Imran Khan has made the task a priority. "They are acquiring our land for a new city" where local residents won't be able to continue farming, he says. We don't want to sell it," says Warraich, sitting on a white plastic armchair outside his farmhouse. The city's high court halted the project last year - one ruling in an ongoing legal fight for the future of the river that could reach Pakistan's Supreme Court. But some opponents are skeptical of those claims and what they see as a land grab by RUDA. RUDA aims to build a man-made channel and a series of barrages along the Ravi's path to control its water level, which the authority says will help conserve what limited flow remains and restore Lahore's supply of groundwater. The $7-billion endeavor would span 46 kilometers (29 miles) and include housing, commercial areas, hospitals and schools - creating a metropolis that could ease pressure on overpopulated Lahore and support its urbanization.įaqir Mohammad Warraich, 21, whose family received a notice last year that the government will acquire their agricultural land. Warraich is among dozens of landowners petitioning against the government's plan to build a megacity from scratch on the banks of the Ravi river, a once-thriving waterway that's been depleted by pollution and dwindling water levels. That didn't sit right with him, so he filed a petition opposing the acquisition. He'd be compensated, and his farm turned into something other than agricultural land. But early last year Warraich was told that the government would be acquiring the land. The property was supposed to pass through generations. Later on, Warraich and his family filled their 300 collective acres with vegetable plots, marigold gardens, and guava groves. It was a place to put roots in the new nation. After the British divided Pakistan and India more than seven decades ago, Suleman Mohammad Sajjad Warraich's father received a section of land on the outskirts of Lahore.
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