The fact of the matter is that societies are changing and so are the demands of modern economies. What was acceptable in the past is unacceptable today.
Pakistan’s main exports are cotton yarn, cotton fabrics, ready made garments, synthetic textiles, hosiery, other textile made-ups, rice, fish products, leather and leather garments, sports goods, surgical goods and carpets etc.
Over the past few years, numerous measures have been adopted by the developed countries that have put extra pressure on the industries of developing countries to comply with environment standards. Hence International buyers are now more sensitive to the quality standards and environment compliance requirement.
The WTO Agreements deals with application of Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary Measures (SPS) with regard to food safety and protection of human, animal life and health. This has created considerable effect on Pakistan exports. ISO 14000 series develops a common world wide approach to management systems. Although the standards do not prescribe performance levels, performance improvements are invariably achieved by any business if its commitment to environmental care is emphasized and employees are trained and aware of the policies in place to protect the environment.
These NTBs are likely to negatively affect the whole value chain. For example for apparel manufacturing, ECO Label is required which means that the product has completed all assets i.e. reduced water and air pollution during fiber production; limited use of substance harmful to environment and in particular, a guarantee to environment and health.
The small and medium size units in the country do not have the capacity to install effluent treatment plants in order to control industrial pollution and comply with national environment standards. The environment related regulations can result in putting responsibility at the end of our exporting industries. The agreement on TBTs in WTO says that market access can or should only be restricted through imposition of standards based on scientific finding sand rationale. Particularly the developed countries are at large to immediately impose trade restrictions even to investigate a particular case or an export consignment.
Although the Uruguay round addresses to issue of technical barriers to trade by introducing the Agreement on TBT, but still it provides sufficient room to impose quality standards, both products and process specific. The subject of NTB currently appears to have no clear-cut demarcation and there exist a lot of gray areas. This dynamic broad spectrum of non-tariff restriction may include Product and Process Standards, Social Accountability and environment i.e. probably the broadest area imposing restrictions on the processes and certain intermediate processing products which are detrimental to overall environment.
Our industries have to ensure that they can tackle the quality and environment concerns of the international buyers as regards Phyto and Phyto sanitary measures of all of its exports. There are serious concerns of Quality and Environmental standards compliance that are and will be restricting our exports. We are already in a way lag behind for fetching comparable prices of our export products even fro Bangladesh, China and India - the main rivals in foreign markets for textiles. In order to ensure that these problems cease to persists, there has to be an across the boarder drive to meet the international environmental standards.
The exports should get ISO 14000 certification in order to assure the importers that environmental standards have been met. In order to accomplish this, the Government will need to play an active role in educating exporters, to enable the exporters/industrialist to meet these standards.
ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGY
The government has taken certain measures to set up the regularity and institution infrastructure for the protection of environment in the country, these measures, though a step in the right direction, but seem to be insufficient to address the intensity of the problems faced by our industries. Some of the statistics depicts large scale deviations from the actual standards. This can only be addresses by adopting an integrated approach that caters to the specific needs of export sector. The need more should be on concrete development programs to support the exports from the brunt of trade restrictions by debating Government role to regularity infrastructure alone.
RESEARCH ON ENVIRONMENT
The research base on environment remains narrow with most of the research activists directed towards monitoring and situation assessment instead of technology development and innovation.
Lack of qualified researchers, absence of well-equipped laboratories and limited availability of financial support for research in environment is must. Hence, future environment conservation, management and use must be based on three-pronged strategy; equitable sharing of benefits environmental management, increasing community management of natural resources and integrating environmental issues into economical and social development planning.
The prevalent parameters of industrial effluents exceed to National Environment Quality Standards recommended values. This effluent when discharged in either the sewerages system which finally is thrown into rivers etc or discharged in ground water reservoir, can play havoc with the eco-system.
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June 15th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Great!!! this is the reality but you should have emphasis on the common man who is the end user because everything is not in the hands of the government or any organization there is some responsibility on us also.
Good work though….