Introducing Ecological Footprint in Pakistan
The concept of ecological footprinting, while catching speed in the west, has yet to find presence in countries like Pakistan where issues of sustainable development have still to be popularized and mainstreamed. This state of affairs is especially true for most corporations and private sector organizations in the country that do not see themselves as significant sources of ecological stress, and fail to take into account the harmful aspects of their standard office practices.
At present it is the need of the hour to engage these entities in the resource conservation debate; educate them on their impacts on ecology and bring to fore the potential threats by placing the issues related to the region’s ecological capacity on their radar screen.
To initiate eco-friendly and sustainable resource conserving trends among corporations and private sector organizations, LEAD-Pakistan in collaboration with Asia-Pacific Forum for Environment and Development (APFED) embarked upon the initiative entitled Greening Organizations to Reduce Ecological Footprints. This initiative mainly aims at raising awareness and altering attitudes among locally operating, private sector organizations in Pakistan that are engaged in running and maintaining professional work places. It adapted evidence based scientific methodologies for altering the attitudes of decision makers towards adopting eco-friendly work practices in the offices. It has introduced the ecological foot-printing technology and is training managers of target organizations on the most effective deployment of this technology at their workplace.
Consequently, to sensitize and educate the country’s corporate and private sector about the level of ecological damage caused by their office operations, LEAD Pakistan opted for the adoption of evidence based, scientific tools rather than the conventional approaches for raising awareness and facilitating action planning. To enable organizations to measure their ecological impact in quantifiable terms, LEAD Pakistan took up the development of a customized Ecological Footprint Calculator for local organizations, using weights and factors that are specific to our national context.
In this connection, LEAD Pakistan is holding three training workshops in three different cities. These workshops are being organized in the Federal Capital, Islamabad; the mega city of Karachi, the hub of commercial activity in the country; and the third workshop is planned to be held in Lahore, one of the fast growing centres of commercial and social activity in the country.