Vulnerability Issues of Sindh Coastal Belt

         

                 Vulnerability Issues of Sindh Coastal Belt

The entire coastal belt of Sindh falls under the command areas of Kotri barrage extending from the barrage itself towards sea. The livelihood of communities depending on irrigation network along with fisheries derived through shallow and deep sea. The below Kotri Barrage area water is supplied erratically which means some times when there is flood situation extra water is escape through irrigation channels / Left Bank (Indus River) Outfall Drain (LBOD) towards sea. Whereas in situation where the water is supplied short due to inadequate rains the coastal belt areas badly affected of sweet water resources. This ultimately contributes to vulnerability as in situation where high floods people seek refuge because the agriculture fields are inundated with water. In other situation the dearth of water affects upon crop yields, on the whole there is a problem of having reliable irrigation supplies and it ultimately affects the livelihood of people living in coastal belt.  

There are number of issues that influence people i.e. fishing opportunities and maintaining the creeks or else small islands. It is mentioned that fishing is the major means of livelihood in the coastal belt. The fish is captured due to middlemen control they are not economically priced. There are no markets the fish catch is directly transported to urban centers, where they are heavily priced and sold to consumers. 96 percent respondents reported that the price of fish catch is very low and they are not in a position to influence middlemen. In addition due to the nature of the location the frequent disasters make their lives difficult in some seasons during the year. Disaster washes out their all belonging let alone the profit that they make. There is no infrastructures are public policy especially in the wake of disasters. The villages situated in the coastal belt are prone to sea intrusion causing huge losses due to water logging and salinity. Under these situation crops cultivation is a major problem whereas even if crop is cultivated the yield is very low because of soil salinization process. Apart from this, vulnerabilities are added in terms of land ownership patterns and land tenure system. There is a need to formulate policy for mitigating or preparing for the disaster situation in the coastal belt. This entire vulnerability is demonstrated at Table 1.2.

Table 1.2      Dimensions of Vulnerability in the coastal region

Physical/material	Social/organizational	Attitudinal/motivational
Coastal belt is vulnerable to a number of natural hazards like riverine and rain floods, cyclones and droughts. River Indus divides coastal area into two parts i.e. East and West. Four talukas of Thatta  district are on the right bank, four are on the left bank while one taluka  Kharo Chhan is on both sides of river Indus. River Indus, after receiving water from 5 of its tributary rivers, causes floods in the district. The Floods in 2010, 2011 and 2012 affected the district.	Poor people can’t afford investment in disaster risk reduction. Coastal Districts have been declared as the poorest districts of Pakistan; especially its coastal areas are extremely poverty stricken. “The poverty figures in Badin and Thatta district are higher perhaps as high as 70 per cent” [Asian Development Bank] .	Land use planning and wise management of land are rarely followed by the people of the district. People prefer to live near river side for agriculture purposes, which is mostly in low lying areas that receive the heaviest damage.
The Coastal talukas being in close proximity to the Arabian Sea are  endangered with growing seawater intrusion owing to the reduced fresh water flows/ availability. Vast land has merged in to sea. Badin, Golarchi, Jati, Shah Bunder, Keti Bunder, Ghora Bari, Mirpur Sakro and Kharo Chhan talukas of the coastal region are the worst affected due to land degradation as a result of this phenomenon.	Rapid growth in Population gives birth to many socio-economic problems and makes the area vulnerable to different natural and made-made hazards.	Whenever early warning is issued to the people against any hazard, the people refuse to evacuate their area. The Pakistan Metrological Department’s (PMD’s) director claimed that “Although they had issued an early flood warning, the people of Sindh had refused to move”.

Floods/Heavy Rains in the Sindh province are a result of the climatic change. Environmental scientists agree that this has happened because of the change in the climate. “We cannot explain the floods in Sindh as the area that received the rain is normally very dry. The amount of rain it received is usually the amount it gets in five years.” [Vice President Dr Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry, World Meteorological Organization (Asia)]	Dependent population [the population that is less than 15 years and more than 65 years of age] in the case of coastal belt is 48.07 percent of the total population and the working population is 51.93 percent, which shows that dependency ratio50 in the coastal region is 93 percent, which is very high.	In rural areas of the district, women are marginalized in disaster risk reduction process because of social, economic, biological and physical differences. Disaster impacts women and men differently, even within the same household. Women have less social, economic and political power and are not represented in formal leadership structures.
Agriculture is largely underdeveloped in coastal belt. Due to the flood irrigation system, acute water shortage and inadequate system of drainage, the cultivable land has degraded to a varying degree, causing a threat to food security and incomes and, employment of the farming community, particularly of small Landowners and haris. [peasant]	The education status is quite poor in coastal belt. The overall illiteracy rate (for the population of 10 years and above) is 64%; for male it is 50 and for female it is 81% while Adult illiteracy rate (15 years and above) is 65 %. For the urban rural comparison, rural illiteracy rate is higher than the urban, which is 71 %. Literate people can easily be mobilized and made aware of the different disasters’ risks.	Most of the people including male, female and even children are fond of chewing Paan and Gutka, which makes them vulnerable to different diseases like oral cancer.
Disasters are rooted in development failures e.g. unsafe buildings that could not with stand cyclones, tsunami and earthquakes results in disasters. Most settlements of the district are made up of sub-standard material and two-third of the housing units of the district are constructed with wood and bamboo.	Plenty of information is available with various agencies especially on status of cyclones and floods affected communities and persons. Several NGOs have started working on Community-Based Disaster Risk Management in several villages and UCs. However, information on hazard risk, specific to vulnerable areas and at various levels (tehsils, union council & village) is still limited.	Cultural constraints on female mobility which hinder self-rescue, for example, women may not leave the home without male permission.
Coastal talukas lack forests of mangroves and coconut which resist strong winds and also prevent soil degradation. There is mounting evidence that over exploitation and loss of mangrove cover has made the coastal communities of the district vulnerable to cyclones. Indus delta areas of Badin and Thatta have seen two major cyclones in quick succession in 1999 and 2001.	According to Census 1998, the economically active population was 25 percent. A high unemployment rate of 18% percent was recorded. Two third of the total employed persons were engaged in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting as primary occupation.
Piped water is available to only 15% percent of the housing units. Drinking water is purchased at a high cost by most coastal communities and lack of access to drinking water is one of the principal reasons that households out-migrate. About 13 percent of rural households have hand pumps inside the housing units, while 16 percent use outside ponds for fetching water and 6 percent of housing units use wells.
Livelihood of the coastal communities is vulnerable against hazards like sea intrusion, cyclones, droughts and floods. According to recent surveys by Sindh Board of Revenue, the degraded lands shot up to 2.2 million acres in 159 dehs [little bigger than a village] reducing crop production in the two coastal districts [Thatta and Badin].

The province of Sindh sustains severe flooding caused by torrential raining in 2011; this exposed the life in the coastal belt. The damages causes by flood could be attributed as manmade and caused by the nature. The manmade causes devastating affects of LBOD drainage that overflow and flown backwards. The recent figures show that poor among the poorest and vulnerable were the segment of population who were at receiving end, these included women and children.

Table 1.2        Statement of Flood Damages in the Coastal Belt

S.#	Area	Total Persons Died	Village Affected	Persons Affected	House Damaged
1	Sindh	401	26562	7311712	1123046
2	Coastal Belt	96        (23.94)	7296 (27.47)	1199312 (16.40)	398255 (35.46)

Figures and parenthesis are %

Source: PDMA, Government of Sindh, 2012.

•  The Need to Improve the Well Being of the Poor

The coastal people are faced with vulnerability issues due to a major factor that is capital required and development needs. In other words lack of economic opportunities in generating resources undermined the development needs. This also deprives them with exclusion from various development opportunities for example, there are health related issues, education, infrastructure and etc. this also places them in a very critical situation whereby inefficient resources needed for economic prosperity and social self sufficiency.

The rent seeking behavior including transparency and corruption further undermines their access towards development funds. The administrative units such as Taluka, Union Council and Town Committees take significant share of public development funds as their administrative cost. In totality funds divided for development of coastal belt actually are dried up. The communities living in coastal belt are living in a fragile situation where by they do not see any tangible affects of development taking place else where in Sindh and also in Pakistan. The poor infrastructure, roads, electrification and water supplies are needed for to formulate sustainable development goals in the coastal belt.

In summary coastal belt faces enormous development challenges that are both welfare improvement for the general population and to poverty reduction in particular. Given the state magnitude and dynamics of poverty in the province it is imperative that government makes a firm commitment to resolve poverty issues in rural areas. To address these challenges, pursuance of repaid growth must be evolved as an integral part of poverty reduction program. Participation in the growth process by the poorest communities is the surest way of ensuring poverty reduction. Therefore local community participation in the planning, implementation process of development programs should be widened and deepened. (Socio-Economic study of Badin and Thatta, 2005)      

The Poverty Issues and Measurements

Majority people are badly affected by the poverty of opportunity than by simple income poverty. 30 percent of Pakistan's population is classified as 'income poor', whereas nearly half suffers from the deprivation of basic opportunities of life.

Asian Development Bank showed that 82 per cent population in five districts out of 20 of the Sindh province, live on less than one dollar a day income (ADB 2004). Poverty is traditionally defined as insufficient income to meet specific needs. Therefore, if those needs can be defined, one can arrive at some measure of the number of people who fail to meet them. The set of needs may be defined as certain minimum caloric requirements for living, or a basket of basic needs that also includes shelter, energy and apparel or even a more extensive bundle representing certain minimum levels of education, health and social participation[1]. 

The largest part of Pakistan's human poverty is to be found among women.  If present trends continue, it is estimated that Pakistan will take several more years before it can stake a claim for a place in the list of developed nations based on socio-economic indicators. 

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[1] Material referred from wesbsite: http://groups.google.com.pk/group/misc.activism.progressive/browse_thread/thread/26d77f3e8999772e/5019bdf87214342f?lnk=st&q=female+poverty+sindh+pakistan&rnum=2&hl=en#5019bdf87214342f