The Coca-Cola Company, in collaboration with the Karachi Port Trust, convened leaders from across the nation for a roundtable session to forge a coalition to clean up the Lyari River under the patronage of Senator Sherry Rehman, Federal Minister of Climate Change.
The roundtable session, which was held in keeping with World Water Week’s theme of “Seeing the Unseen,” was presided over by Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman, with Federal Minister for Maritime Affairs Syed Faisal Ali Subzwari attending as guest of honour and being led by S.M. Tariq Huda, Chairman of the Karachi Port Trust. All of these individuals represented the highest-ranking organisations most affected by the report that revealed catastrophic levels of waste accumulation over the
Pakistan has been classified as the country most vulnerable to climate change, as is evident from the current floods the nation is experiencing, according to Federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman, who organised a committee to oversee the Lyari Cleanup Project. Broad-based relationships will be essential in ensuring that we create solutions that can be technologically scaled up.
Fahad Ashraf, Vice President, The Coca-Cola Company, Pakistan said, “We have always known that the communities in Karachi’s harbour area are adversely impacted by poor waste management, but this is not a responsibility that falls on one single entity because the quantum of the problem is too large. This is a call to anyone who cares about Pakistan’s water security to step in.”
Moderated by public policy expert, Mosharraf Zaidi, this event aimed to co-create solutions that can be used to scale up sustainable interventions, emphasize on local and international expertise. In attendance were representatives of the global NGO, The Ocean Cleanup, WWF-Pakistan, Unilever, Nestlé, Engro, the packaging alliance CORE, SEED Ventures, Indus Earth Trust and National Institute of Oceanography, to name a few.
As part of The Ocean Cleanup and Coca-Cola’s global partnership to stem the tide of plastic waste by intercepting it in rivers around the world, they are looking to build a coalition that explores solutions to clean the Lyari harbor area.
Mr. Tariq Huda, Chairman of Karachi Port Trust, a partner in making the project a reality, said “This port connects Pakistan’s northern provinces and the overall Pakistan economy to the world, and water security, therefore, is a national security issue that we must neither deny nor delay solving.”
The Environmental Scoping Study reveals that the Lyari harbour area, which was meant to be a spillway to control the flow of flood water, is now choked by accumulated debris. Every month, 9,000 tonnes of debris enter this river, almost entirely uncleaned.
With about 33 million people nation-wide impacted by the floods and an impending food security issue, this timely report calls for urgent and substantive action in densely populated cities like Karachi that are at a perpetual threat to urban flooding.
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