ISLAMABAD, May 22: Pakistan’s rapidly growing population at the rate of two per cent a year will reach 217 million by 2020 and will double in the next 32 years.

A latest official document obtained by Dawn also says that poverty levels have increased in rural areas of the country.

It regretted that poverty and the high rate of population growth rate could not be effectively contained in the country.

“Pakistan is the 7th most populous nation in the world and its 153 million people are growing at the rate of almost two per cent a year. Such a rapidly growing population means greater fragmentation of farmlands, greater competition for water, further pressure on fragile and marginal land and the denudation of natural forests and rangelands,” it added.“A reliable estimate indicates that 48.3 per cent of rangelands are completely degraded.”

Over the past decade, the document said, poverty levels have increased in rural areas while they declined in urban areas.

About one-third of the total households in the country were considered below the poverty line, whereas poverty levels in rural area remained close to 39 per cent.

The document is in contrast with the government’s claim of less than 1.9 per cent population growth rate and ten per cent poverty reduction achieved during the last seven years.

The World Bank and other donor agencies, however, believe that there had been only five per cent poverty alleviation.

“Poor people tend to exploit their limited land resources more intensively to meet immediate needs, even if exploitation compromises the long term stability and viability of the land and its natural resources. Of course, further degradation of land and natural resources leads, in a vicious circle, to even more poverty.”

It said that despite many efforts to address the main causes of land degradation, the process of desertification could not be halted due to several barriers to sustainable land management. These include policy, institutional, financial and socio-economic barriers.

The subsidized electricity tariff (flat rate) has been introduced to encourage farmers to increase agriculture production. This tariff promotes poor use of scare water resources in dry land, especially in Balochistan where farmers do not invest in improving irrigation efficiencies of their tube-wells.

In Balochistan, poor farmers who cannot invest heavy amounts in channelling water flow, low water tables often abandon their lands.

Such land is often left open to free-grazing, removal of existing vegetation for firewood, and removal of top soil for land development at sites where water is available.

Continued unsustainable mining of groundwater and consequent abandonment of land will cause further desertification in dry land areas.

The causes of land degradation in Pakistan include poor irrigation and drainage practices, overgrazing, deforestation, increasing competition for water, drought, migration, intensification of agriculture, flooding, population pressures and persistent poverty.

Furthermore some threats are greater than others in terms of their manifestation. For example, water logging and salinity, because of poor irrigation practices, affects 17 million hectare of land, while deforestation and overgrazing affect 11 and 24 million hectare, respectively.