Introduction

In recent years, the Government of Pakistan has taken various concrete steps to attain control over industrial pollution in the country. The most significant measure was the enactment of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997, which makes it incumbent upon industrial facilities to restrict their air emissions and effluents to the limits specified in the National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS). The Act also outlines institutional framework for administering its laws: it institutes one federal and four provincial Environmental Protection Agencies (EPAs) to formulate NEQS and devise systems and procedures required to determine whether industries comply with them.

Unless the EPAs elicit the industrial sector’s participation, the second task isn’t small or easy. It requires the EPAs to measure, analyze and report the environmental performance of every industrial facility in the country, against no less than 48 environmental parameters-32 for liquid effluents and 16 for air emissions, which are in the NEQS. Clearly, this approach would not be feasible, for one thing, it costs far more than the EPAs, with their limited resources, could ever afford. Secondly, it fails to involve industries in the monitoring and evaluation of environmental performance, which will retard the development of their own capacity to identify pollution control measures. Left out in the cold, industries are likely to cooperate less with EPA inspectors and consider environmental monitoring more a hindrance than an opportunity to discover new roads to cost effectiveness.

Perceiving the need for a more feasible approach, the Pakistan Environmental Protection Council constituted an Environmental Standards Committee in 1996 to devise realistic modalities for NEQS enforcement and simplified monitoring procedures. The Committee was chaired by Mr. Shamsh Kasim Lakha, President of the Aga Khan University, and included representatives of industrial interest groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other stakeholders. An Expert Advisory Committee was also appointed to address technical issues related to the NEQS and environmental mentoring and reporting procedures. Working in close collaboration with various industries, NGOs and research organizations, the Committee completed its work in August 1998. One of the important products of its efforts is the “Self-Monitoring and Reporting System for Industry”, which will be implemented by the EPAs in collaboration with the industry and other stakeholders.

Objectives of the Self-Monitoring Programme

Self-Monitoring and Reporting System will make the country’s industry owners and operators responsible for systematic monitoring and reporting of their environmental performance. By implementing this system, the government will, in fact, transfer the responsibility for examining and evaluating industry’s environmental performance to individual industrial facilities. Apart from saving EPAs considerable expense, time and effort, this measure will enable industry to make long-term provisions for eco-friendly production. The reported data will also enable government agencies to assist industrial units in controlling their pollution levels.

The Self-Monitoring and Reporting System

System proposed by the Environmental Standards Committee takes into account the resources and interests of both EPAs and industries. It classifies industry into three categories A, B and C each corresponding to a specified reporting frequency. Category A industry will report their emission levels after every month, category B industry quarterly and category C industry biannually. Industrial units will get their effluent tested from a laboratory and enter the results in the electronic forms (software SMART – Self-Monitoring and Reporting Tool, provided with this package). The data so entered could be sent to respective Environmental Protection Agency via email or through floppy.

Email and postal addresses of EPAs are given in this package. Sampling and analysis requirements and procedures, and the reporting format are also prescribed. Instruction Manual of software has been written in a simplified language, which assist operator on installation and usage of the software. Under the Self-Monitoring and Reporting System, industries in Pakistan will be responsible for systematically monitoring their environmental performance and reporting the data to Environmental Protection Agencies.

As Industry owners prepare to meet their new obligations, some important questions are bound to arise, for instance, Are all industries to monitor their pollution? Have the EPAs defined any procedures for sampling? Whose analysis results will be acceptable to the EPAs? Which laboratory facilities should be used for the samples analysis? Clearly, before the system can start functioning, industry owners need to be informed of the specific rules, method and procedures they are to observe under the Self-Monitoring and Reporting System. The aim of this package is to provide this information to industry owners so they can respond effectively to their new obligations.