Muhammad Qumail Haider

NDU-S18-0033

Feburary 15, 2018

Assignment 01: Does Media reporting care about evaluation of Projects/Porgrams?

An analysis of three newspapers over the period of last two months regarding climate and
Environment.

To evaluate the study , following newspapers were reviewed and a brief analysis was given.

i) Daily DAWN
ii) The Nation
iii) Express Tribune

Analysis:

According to daily dawn newspaper the cpec coal based power plant is damaging the
environment says ADB. The report says that due to increase in fossil fuel power generation. The
environment is being widely effected and with the passage of time it will be disastrous. It will
lead to green house gas emissions. Here I would like to add some more. In sahiwal there is a coal
power plant that has been recently been constructed by a Chinese company in order to raise
energy. In countries around the world , coal plants have been shut down because it creates
pollution and it effects the fertility of land as well.

Similarly there is another problem of ground water.There is no government action on this issue .
The polluted water is so dangerous that it is contaminating clean water lands and is causing land
to turn barren and thus causing salinity.There is no check and balance.6 million hectares of land
has been reported to be barren just because of this untreated water , that has made us to worry a
lot. Because in future It will effect our production capacity and would cause people to suffer
from countless diseases. The water level is decreasing day by day that will cause land to turn
barren and will effect the productivity.
According to the nation newspaper mohammad mohad zulfiqar states that climates change is
altering natural lifecycle. Disasters are always expected and every year millions of lives are lost .
This all is due to installation of toxic plants and cut down of trees and illegal use of natural
resources . According to NASA in 2071 there would be 10 celcius change in temperatue , which
means complete destruction . Actually we have triggered the dooms day clock that is a severe
threat to our planet . So in order to save our planet the government should play their role in order
save our planet from such kind of destruction. Policies should be implemented so that there
should be no threat to the planet earth.

Another issue in the nations newspaper was the installation of cement plants . In Punjab province
the installation of cement plants have been stopped because many pollution related issues were
reported . First issue that was reported was smog. It was causing air pollution and was causing
people to suffer from diseases. The ban on existing plants was not imposed because the
influential investors stated that it was basically a product for cpec.

The first report of Dawn on coal based power projects is not focused on the impacts of the
emission of greenhouse gases rather it focuses on the financials of the CPEC and its energy
projects. Report on Ground water is well researched article presenting the global statistics.
Majority of reports/articles present in newspapers over past two months are generic and very few
articles are researched based giving solid facts and stats. The few number of reports also depicts
that environment and climate is not priority of our nation, the possible reason behind that is, the
illiteracy of general public about the climate changes and environment. Editors of papers are
mostly focused on political news generally and in business section primary focus is on financial
matters which are related to the investors and businessmen.

References :

1. https://epaper.dawn.com/DetailNews.php?StoryText=04_02_2018_010_009

2. Ministry of Climate change, Pakistan report 2016, “Environment and Climate Change
Outlook”, chapter 07, online publication.

3. https://www.dawn.com/news/1382878/groundwater-one-of-the-most-neglected-resources
4. https://nation.com.pk/E-Paper/lahore/2018-02-05/page-9/detail-1

5. https://nation.com.pk/E-Paper/lahore/2018-01-10/page-8/detail-8

6. https://nation.com.pk/E-Paper/lahore/2017-12-27/page-9/detail-2