As an inescapable concomitant with the traditional route of development, Pakistan has been facing natural resource degradation and pollution problems. The unsavory spectacle of air pollution, water contamination and other macro environmental impacts such as water logging, land degradation and desertification, are on rise. All this, in conjunction with rapid growth in population, has been instrumental to the expanding tentacles of poverty. In order to make an assessment of the environmental problems as a prelude to arrest the pace of degeneration and, provide for sustainable course of economic development, the availability of adequate data is imperative. This publication is an attempt to provide relevant statistics compiled through secondary sources. The 1st Compendium was prepared in 1998 under the Technical Assistance of Asian Development Bank in accordance with, as far as possible, the guidelines of “United Nations Framework for Development of Environment Statistics (FDES)”. This up-dating has been made without any project facilitation. Notwithstanding exclusive reliance on mail inquiry, all possible efforts have been made to collect available data and, quite a few new tables on quality of water, concentration of dust fall in big cities and, state of air quality in urban centers of Punjab, have also been included in the compendium. However, some tables included in the predecessor of this publication could not be up-dated due either to their being single time activity or the source agencies did not have the pertinent data.

As an inescapable concomitant with the traditional route of economic development, Pakistan has been facing natural resource degradation and pollution problems. The unsavory spectacle of air pollution, water contamination and other macro environmental impacts such as water logging, land degradation and desertification, are on rise. All this, in conjunction with rapid growth in population, have been instrumental to the expanding tentacles of poverty. In order to make an assessment of the environmental problems as a prelude to arrest the pace of degeneration and, provide for sustainable course of economic development, the availability of adequate data is imperative. This publication is an attempt to provide relevant statistics compiled through secondary sources. The task of environmental data collection does not consist just in determining the frame and approaching the selected sources of information because environmental statistics per se do not exist as a ready-to-compile/pick category as generally perceived about data and statistics. The information on environment are generated through deliberate scientific observations and measurements in a consistent way, under the aegis of specialized agencies. Since it is skill and resource intensive pursuit and, generally undertaken in public sector, the overall budgetary/financial constraints do take the toll of the canvas and continuity of environmental data generation down the time lane. Consequently, availability of the statistics falls short of desired level. Further, the studies pertaining to normals over a period of time are repeated after long time intervals which may not conform with the quinquennial periodicity of this document. Similarly, a lot of variables antecedental, associated with and, consequential to, environment are derived from population census which is yet to be carried out even though the stipulated decennial time frame has long been overstepped. Nevertheless, the latest update of the compendium is a good attempt to mirror quite a few environmental factors as a means to raise awareness and help stay focus on the pivotality of environmental concerns for instituting sustainable development paradigm-the only way forward to ensuring the continuity of human race on the face of planet earth.

As an inescapable concomitant with the traditional route of economic development, Pakistan has been facing natural resource degradation and pollution problems. The unsavory spectacle of air pollution, water contamination and other macro environmental impacts such as water logging, land degradation and desertification, are on rise. All this, in conjunction with rapid growth in population, have been instrumental to the expanding tentacles of poverty. In order to assess the environmental problems as a prelude to arrest the pace of degeneration and provide for sustainable course of economic development, the availability of adequate data is imperative. This publication is an attempt to provide relevant statistics compiled through secondary sources collected from different departments. The task of environmental data collection does not consist just in determining the frame and approaching the selected sources of information because environmental statistics per se do not exist as a ready-to-compile/pick category as generally perceived about data and statistics. The information on environment has generated through deliberate scientific observations and measurements in a consistent way, under the aegis of specialized agencies. Since it is skill and resource intensive pursuit and generally undertaken in public sector, the overall budgetary/financial constraints do take the toll of the canvas and continuity of environmental data generation down the time lane. Consequently, availability of the statistics falls short of desired level. Further, the studies pertaining to normal over a period of time are repeated after long time intervals, which may not conform with the quinquennial periodicity of this document. Similarly, many variables antecedental, associated with and, consequential to, environment are derived from population census, which is yet to be carried out even though the stipulated decennial time frame has long been overstepped. Nevertheless, the latest update of the compendium is a good attempt to mirror quite a few environmental factors as a means to raise awareness and help stay focus on the pivotality of environmental concerns for instituting sustainable development paradigm-the only way forward to ensuring the continuity of human race on the face of planet earth.