World Wide Fund Pakistan’s (WWF-Pakistan) project City-Wide Partnership for Sustainable Water Use and Water Stewardship in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of the Lahore was presented at World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden last week.
According to a press release issued by the WWF-Pakistan, the project is geared towards water cooperation by facilitating effective water resource management in SMEs of the City and adjoining areas, creating a mechanism of water cooperation with the private sector.
WWF-Pakistan Water Security and Stewardship Manager Ali Hasnain Sayed said the forum in Stockholm discussed the dynamics within resource management which was changing with the entry of the private sector.
He said corporate water users increasingly perceived water scarcity, quality degradation and floods as direct business risks whereas indirect regulatory and reputation risks arose when water became a shared resource with communities and ecosystems.
He said institutional factors, such as weak regulation and governance, were often identified as significant contributors to the manifestation of these risks.
He said businesses were partnering with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), donors and governments in collective action to attempt to mitigate shared water risks.
He questioned how check and balance could be maintained when companies were engaging in weakly governed systems.
WWF-Pakistan’s water stewardship project, in partnership with Cleaner Production Institute (CPI) and WWF-UK, and funded by the European Union’s SWITCH-Asia program, was an example of how businesses were successfully partnering with NGOs to manage water risks and issues to benefit society, he said.
He said the project was contributing to improving environmental sustainability and livelihoods as well as supporting sustainable economic growth and development in Pakistan.
He said the project was focusing on Lahore, which had approximately 2,700 SMEs, and its five surrounding industrial districts of Sheikhupura, Kasur, Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Sialkot.
He said SMEs in the province had particularly low water efficiency in factory operations compared to their counterparts in southern Pakistan.
He said the action focused on SMEs in high water using and polluting processing and manufacturing sectors of textiles, sugar, pulp and paper and tanneries.
He said WWF-Pakistan aimed to establish strong linkages and outreach in order to promote sustainable industrial development through its partnerships with the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industries (LCCI) and Punjab Small Industries Corporation (PSIC).
Published in The Express Tribune, September 13th, 2013.