19 August 2010

The Terrible Cost Of Doing Nothing
By a cruel coincidence, the same heavy rains that brought a bumper sugar harvest to India have ravaged more than 200,000 acres of sugar cane in Pakistan, caused more than $2 billion in other agricultural and livestock losses, and killed or displaced some 20 million Pakistanis who lived near the Indus river and its tributaries.

This is the worst flood since the founding of Pakistan in 1947, but it is by no means the worst in the four thousand year history of the Indus Valley. The Rig Veda records catastrophic flash floods of similar magnitude during Vedic times.

Earlier still, the globally powerful Indus Valley Civilization was forced to tame the river with a comprehensive flood control system of check dams, underground channels and reservoirs to capture flood waters for later use in irrigation and household water supply. They may even have attempted to divert some of the river’s Himalayan tributaries. Like the Roman water works in Europe, some of these Harappan works remain in use today.

The combination of Pakistan’s annual monsoon and the steep headwaters of the Indus means that without flood control and water harvesting the same tragedy will occur whenever there is a heavy monsoon in the mountains, washing away the topsoil on which the nation depends and water that could have been used for irrigation along with it.

Pakistan will need a lot more than emergency aid to recover from this tragedy and to become self-sufficient in both food and fuel.

We in the biofuels industry can understand this situation. We live in a metaphorical Indus Valley. Still largely dependent on agriculture, we study the weather forecasts and pray. But in this case we can do more. We can help Pakistan’s biofuels industry to get back on its feet.