KARACHI: The Pakistan Red Crescent, Sindh Chapter, on Monday launched a campaign to clean Karachi beaches.

Hundreds of students belonging to various universities, colleges and schools of the metropolis, the general public, Red Crescent staff and volunteers participated in the drive.

It inculcated a sense of ownership and civic responsibility as the participants played their role in reducing plastic waste and marine pollution by collecting and sorting plastic waste at Seaview.

The programme was a joint venture of Climate Advocacy and Coordination for Resilient Action (CACRA) and Urban Action Kit projects funded by the German Red Cross.

The purpose of the drive was to mobilise communities to participate in a healthy activity and involve people in removing garbage from beaches, as well as to identify the causes of the litter, modify people’s behaviours, and increase awareness of the scale of the marine pollution.

Muhammad Sajjad, Programs and Disasters Management Manager of PRC-Sindh, said that the multiple consequences of climate change required stakeholders and communities to work together for climate change adaptation.

CACRA was launched by Pakistan Red Crescent with the support of the GRC in 2017. It was one of its components that sought to improve collaboration with the stakeholders to address climate change impacts in localised regions and build disaster risk management tools, he said. Earlier, the PRC-Sindh signed a joint declaration on climate change with many stakeholders working to raise climate change awareness in Pakistan, he added.

Ghulam Rasool Farooqui said the initiative was also a part of UAK project, which was a quick-start, low-cost, do-it-yourself guide to urban resilience activities that increased a community-based organisation’s visibility and engagement on urban issues.

He stressed that people should understand the value of cleanliness as Islam also taught us to keep the environment clean.

He urged visitors to refrain from dropping garbage on beaches and asked them to collect it and put it in trash cans instead.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2022