World Environment Day, June 5, passed with little fanfare. In Lahore the Punjab Environmental Protection Agency held a seminar with the Punjab University College for Environmental and Earth Sciences, focused on water scarcity and Punjab government initiatives for environmental protection, while the Lahore Waste Management Company organised awareness walks and clean-up drives in different parts of the city. In Karachi the Pakistan Navy held a seminar on its maintenance of harbours and in Islamabad the Indus Consortium organised an awareness drive on the impact of plastic shopping bags. The government otherwise did not utter a word on the occasion and its concern for the environment can be measured by the cut in funding to the Climate Change Division from Rs 58 million to Rs 25 million in this year’s budget. The development focus on infrastructure will undoubtedly have negative environmental effects too. Today, it is almost pedantic to restate the causes and importance of environmental degradation, for Pakistan and human life. Rapacious exploitation of natural resources for production of consumer and industrial goods with its effects of deforestation, pollution, species extinction and climate change are well known to people who follow environmental issues. Hence a specific example may better illustrate the issue, e.g. environmental degradation of the Indus River and the damage to communities and ecosystems along this invaluable resource. For millennia human communities have been part of the natural Indus ecosystem, and have given back to the environment by sustainably using resources, particularly in the delta region. The arrival of large-scale agriculture and irrigation changed the landscape, but communities survived, and almost two million people inhabit it today. Since independence, expanded construction of barrages resulted in habitat fragmentation, while water extraction now dries up downstream channels for several months each year. Failure to recognise downstream ecosystem needs has often led to water allocation decisions that are neither economically nor ecologically sound. As a result, not only are the 23 species of mammal and fish life unique to the Indus in danger of extinction, so are fishing and mangrove-dependent communities along the river. These people represent the highest incidence of poverty in the country, at over 60 percent, and are forced to migrate to cities or work as indentured labour on large agricultural holdings. However, even large agricultural tracts face seawater intrusion and salinisation, which has claimed at least 12 percent of Sindh’s total agricultural area, over 500,000 hectares. The loss to fishing communities is estimated at $ 60-70 million per year. Hence upstream water management that focused on agricultural production without taking into account environmental effects has resulted in increasing poverty, destroying agricultural land, and reducing potential income. This is one example of how lack of environmental concern has knock-on effects for the whole country. The government should understand that World Environment Day is meant to raise awareness of environmental issues and consequences among people who do not understand its importance. Without nurturing nature, Pakistan, and humanity, faces an increasingly bleak future. *