KARACHI, Dec 19: Speakers at a conference on Monday urged scientists to help the society combat environmental problems, which were on the rise, due to man-made incursions into nature.

The three-day international conference on “Environmental horizons” was inaugurated by the vice-chancellor of Karachi University, Dr Pirzada Qasim, on the campus.

The organizers of the moot are KU Chemistry department and International Centre for Chemical Science, under the auspices of “Society for the Environmental Scientists (SES)”.

Two plenary lectures were also delivered by Dr Tariq Munir (UK) and Dr Shahbaz Khan (Austraila), who spoke on solar energy and water resources respectively.

More plenary lecturers, invited lectures and oral and poster presentations in all the areas of environmental sciences, chemical sciences, biological sciences and earth sciences, would be held on Dec 20 and 21, said the organizing secretary of the conference, Dr Majid Mumtaz.

The KU vice-chancellor stressed the need for promoting and propagating the collective efforts of the scientists to combat environmental challenges.

He said that the environment related problems were international phenomenon and those could not be seen in the context of any particular country.

Dr Pirzada said that there was a need to educate people in the perspective of environment and point out to them that what sort of damages they could cause to the nature and imbalance the process of human survival due to ignorance or negligence. Pollution and other acts of environmental degradation have direct relation to changes taking place across the globe, he added saying that diseases and natural disasters could be attributed to our negligence.

He said that despite the fact that environment supports the life of individuals; people had been failing to play any substantial role in this regard. The land sliding taking place in the quake-hit areas of Pakistan were significant due to the absence of trees and plants there, he remarked.

Dr Iqbal Choudhary of the ICCS said that the SES had been established keeping in view the importance of environment, which was under threat due to pollution. We would be sharing our experiences and recent advances in environmental issues through the SES, he added.

Among others, chairman of the chemistry department, Dr Syed Iftikhar Imam Naqvi also spoke at the inaugural session and hoped that the conference would help generate interest of scientists and community equally in the environmental issues.

An exhibition comprising posters depicting vital and current environmental issues, static models and multi-media presentations, all prepared by students, would be held on the third day of the conference, Dec 21, said a press release.