Ecopreneurship- the best option to rehabilitate flood affectees in Pakistan

Editor’s note: This is the first post by a new Ecopreneurist contributor in Pakistan, Asif Iqbal. We appreciate his first-hand description of what Pakistan needs to recover and wish everyone there well. Please comment below if you know of good examples of entrepreneurship helping countries re-build after natural disasters.

I know it is too early to talk about the rehabilitation of the people affected due to the massive flooding in Pakistan. Right now about 20 million people, directly affected due to the unexpected monsoon spell are in immediate life-saving need of drinking water, food, shelter and medical treatment. Almost half of Pakistan is under water.

Agricultural land under flood water in Nowshera district

Families who are able to find safe places are now struggling to protect their little children from the heat of the sun. Women, particularly those pregnant, little children and elderly are more vulnerable in the aftermath of flood.

More than 60 percent of the country’s population live in the rural areas, and their major source of earnings are farming and livestock raring. The majority of women help their families in the agriculture sectors, in addition to their domestic chores such as fetching water, collecting fuel wood, food preparation and care for their children. The horrible flood water not only destroyed the houses, bridges, link roads and other infrastructure but also destroyed the primary source of communities’ livelihoods, i.e., crops, vegetables and fruit orchards, thus making survivors totally dependents and helpless.

According to the UN secretary general, it is a slow motion tsunami. The biggest challenge to the government of Pakistan is to provide immediate relief and life saving items to the huge numbers of flood survivors. However, the rehabilitation and development phase will be perhaps, the more challenging task, in the near future.

Punjab province, the backbone of the Pakistan agriculture sector, faced massive losses to its crops in the fields. It is the same is situation in the provinces of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa where farmers have lost everything. Food security is a big risk to the people of Pakistan in coming years.

Despite the challenging relief period, rehabilitation has to be started in the coming three to six months. I think ecopreneurship is one of the best options for the stakeholders who would come forward to rehabilitate the affectees’ assets and their sources of livelihoods. Ecopreneurship, in this regard, can really help people not only to restore their livelihoods but also to help them to adapt to the worse impacts of climate change in future. Experts are of the view that due to no proper rain water harvesting and storage system, particularly in the catchment areas of Swat River and other tributaries, flash flood becomes more and more severe due to the extra ordinary rainfall.

One of the options in the rehabilitation phase could be to organize communities, including women, into community based organizations (CBOs) with necessary capacity building and other inputs and encourage them to start rain water harvesting and storage of river and other natural spring water. People can use this stored water into number of the agro-forestry initiatives like multi cropping, fruit orchard and kitchen gardening. By utilizing the water of rivers and natural springs in the catchment areas, people can produce clean energy through micro hydal power plants which the local CBOs can easily handle. The same water can be used for irrigation of agricultural lands and construction of fish ponds on commercial basis.

In the plain areas, which are particularly feasible for crop production in Pakistan, such as Punjab and Sindh, organic farming must be started along with improving water distribution system from canals to benefit tail user farmers in particular and others in general. Women and other community members should receive inputs and trainings to start organic kitchen gardening and fruit orchards on commercial basis with proper mitigation measure such as CBOs’ cash saving mechanism and crops’ insurance schemes for poor and small farmers. Such initiatives will not only provide source of livelihoods for poor communities but also contribute in lessening the chances of floods and damages to the community assets in future.