THATA: For decades, grazing animals and loggers have destroyed thousands of trees on Pakistan’s Indus River, home to the world’s largest arid mangrove forests.
About 95 percent of all mangrove forest cover in Pakistan is in the Indus Delta, and it was once home to eight species of mangroves, which the Sindh Forest Department (SFD) says forest destruction has been halved .
In 2005, mangrove cover had fallen to 84,000 hectares – the lowest level recorded – from 260,000 hectares in the 1980s.
In 2019, as part of an ongoing drive to improve forest cover, the SFD partnered with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to establish a mangrove nursery, employing just 250 women. to plant new trees but also to protect them from threats from animals and humans.
Employed with their families, the women, officially known as eco-guards, play an important role in the protection of mangroves, which is the work of a family unit, ”said Riaz Ahmed Wagan, chief conservator of mangroves. the SFD, to Arab News.
Assessments by the SFD showed that mangrove cover had risen again to 210,000 hectares by 2020.
The women’s eco-guard, Wagan, played a major role in improving the numbers.
One of them, Hawa Dablo, a 60-year-old from Mero Dablo, a fishing village on the edge of the Arabian Sea, said she spent her days sowing seeds, looking after shoots and standing guard, with other members. of her family, against the trees being destroyed by moving animals.
“I have been working here for the last two years since this nursery was established in my city,” Dablo told Arab News.
She said the most vulnerable trees were young mangroves that needed to be protected from camel and buffalo grazing as well as local loggers.
“To preserve mangroves, locals start campaigns from their own homes and on a personal level,” Dablo said. “Every home or town will ensure that their animals are released for open grazing only in those areas where mangroves are ripe; local people will ensure that areas where new plantations have been planted do not become infected by animals. ”
But she said illegal logging was still a threat, even though it was no longer rampant.
“If we pay attention to mangrove cutting activity we will tell our male family members to do more,” Dablo said. “When mangroves are deliberately cut, usually by outsiders, we complain to local SFD officers through our male partners. ”
Dr Tahir Rasheed, the regional head for the Sindh and Balochistan shield at WWF Pakistan, said under the mangrove defense program, the women were given small stipends and were encouraged to “introduce tools sewing to do sewing and curing work, ice boxes, and ponds for fishing to make a living. ”
The incentives, he said, were significant in an area where it is estimated that nearly 90 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Most homes on the delta are dependent on fishing, and the conservation of mangroves was crucial in maintaining the marine ecosystem, explained another female eco-guard, as there was a wide variety of fish lay their eggs in a mangrove bush on the delta.
“We will protect mangroves and not allow people to cut green mangroves,” said Razia Dablo from the island fishing village of Khariyoon Takur. “If there are no more green mangroves, it will destroy the fish ecosystem; that will adversely affect our livelihoods. ”
In addition to employing eco-guards, the SFD has provided full-time and part-time “green jobs” to more than 50,000 people since 2000 – about 40 per cent of whom are women.
“Despite social constraints restricting the work of women outside their homes, the participation of women in forestry on the Indus River Delta is close to half of the forestry workforce, which is a great achievement, ”Said Wagan. “For upcoming planting projects on the delta and elsewhere, we expect to receive the highest level of female participation. ”