BADIN – The mega infrastructure of the Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) was initiated in December 1984 with mega funding from the World Bank and six other international financial institutions credit of $150 million under the primary objective “raising agricultural production of 1,27 million Cultivable Command Area (CCA) mainly reducing water logging and salinity in four of the districts of Sindh province including Badin, Nawabshah, Sanghar and Mirpurkhas on the left bank of Indus.” At the very beginning of work, local people of Badin district expressed their apprehensions and uncertainties since they came to know about the construction of mega infrastructure passing through the district and no heed was paid to their concerns which brought them to devastation. The Environmental Impact Assessment for LBOD was also conducted in 1989 which also confirmed this mega infrastructure as the risk for the people of district Badin. The people of Badin district not only lost their fisheries and other livelihood resources but also started losing their agricultural land due to backflow in local drains. The mega infrastructure of the district has become a cause of multiple disasters in the area and as a result of shortcomings in the Environmental Assessment, decision-making on environmentally crucial elements became less systematic, less informed and more ad hoc. Apart from the negligence of environmental aspects, policy flaws and faulty design, another major cause of the disaster was poor supervision of infrastructure component whereas undoubtedly, local wisdom of fisher folk who have inherited knowledge about the sea and are aware of the region holds weight, was also not considered to be valuable. All the structure of the mega infrastructure in the district Badin was built through availing the mega loans of $150 million to increase the production of the crops and rehabilitation of the land of the four districts but unfortunately, this turned back and became disastrous to people of three other districts too. The 131944 residents especially of the coastal belt whose livelihood was the agriculture cultivating on their small piece of the land have lost their livelihood sources due to the development of the mega infrastructure (LBOD) in district Badin. They, after depriving of their land, their families wholly on fishing for the rest of the days and work hard to meet the needs and expenses of their families.
