The Indo River is still colonized, said activists, lawyers and civil society members at a climate justice conference in Karachi on Sunday, asking for resistance against extractive policies and the elimination of indigenous knowledge.
Organized by the Climate Action Center, ‘The Indey Conference of the Indo’, held for the first time, is a forum with the objective of amplifying the voices of the “first -line defenders” against the exploitation of natural resources.
The first of its kind, the conference brought together women, the working class, lawyers, students and journalists committed to the cause of climatic justice. Pakistan was classified as the country most vulnerable to climate change in 2022.
“The Indo River is on its deathbed,” said Yasir Darya, founder of the Center for Climate Action (CAC), while starting the one -day conference, addressing the theft of resources and climate injustice in Sindh.
He called to give the river the “personality status” to guarantee its preservation against what it called “colonial policies, theft of water and capitalist interests.”
ABIRA Ashfaq lawyer from the Cac Green Chamber, speaking with Dawn.comHe explained what the status of personality would mean for the Indo River: “If we can make people look at the rights of the river, perhaps that could be an indirect way to make other ecological damages that are happening.”
She added: “If a corporation can have a legal position, why can’t a nature body?
“It would also be a way to bring other ecological conversations to the fold: about poverty, about channels in the Indo, about villages, rural rights, the rights of women farmers,” Ashfaq said.
“We talk about how indigenous people have knowledge, which we often take wisdom, but it is the knowledge that is never taken into account.”
Calling the “hypocrisy” of the State about water resources in Sindh, the former president of the Bar Association of the Superior Court of Sindh (SHCBA), Zubair Abro, criticized the contrast between the national policies of Pakistan and his international position.
“Pakistan justifies the allocation of water on the basis that it is a lower riverside country, but at the same time, he denies that the right to riverside areas inferior to the country,” he said while talking in a discussion panel in the event.
He also noted that existing water distribution treaties, the Indo water treaty and the 1991 water distribution agreement do not include any disposition for climate or environmental preservation. Abro requested a review of the agreements.
Challenging what he described as “imperialist extractive policies” promulgated by the state in the river, lawyer Romisa Jami said the Indo River has become a merchandise.
“It was never a merchandise,” he added.
She urged the audience to see the problem through the “decolonization” lens. While the Indo River is a complete ecosystem for the people of Sindh, “to colonial teachers, it offers an extraction opportunity,” Jami said.
She attributed the loss of sustainable agricultural practices to the “construction of irrigation projects by the British empire.” Jami emphasized that people have come to “inherit our colonial past, which has always been driven by profits and never focused on human.” She recommended an existing system review as the only way to follow.
The speakers also gave alarm for the recent initiatives for the construction of channels and corporate agriculture introduced under the green initiative of Pakistan (GPI), which caused protests between Sindh, particularly in Baberloi, where the demonstrations continued for days until the project of the channel was filed. However, the corporate agriculture initiative remains in force.
The lawyer Kazim Mahesar, the activist Ama Haseb Panhwar and defender Riaz Sabzoi, who were involved in the protests, spoke during a panel of discussion about theft of resources, warning that corporate agriculture was “only an appearance of theft of land.”
“We are told that we go to court against these decisions, but with the 26th amendment instead, the doors of justice have been closed for us,” Panhwar told.
Maesar claimed that “the land of Sindh has been stolen under corporate agriculture.” He added: “It’s not that we are against development, we just face destruction.”
In addition, he argued that such development projects “are only for the elite”, and added that “there is nothing for common man.”
The historian Hafeez Baloch, who also spoke on the panel, recalled that Malir, where he was born and grew up, was one of the first victims of monitoring land in Sindh.
“Malir was an agricultural land, but was stolen and delivered to the capitalists,” he said.
He also referred to the late scholar Gul Hassan Kalmati, who had warned that “what is happening in Malir will eventually happen to the rest of Sindh.”
