Paradise lost: how toxic water destroyed Pakistan’s largest lake and the lives of its inhabitants

For generations the Mohanna tribe have lived, loved, worked, and played on Pakistan’s Manchar Lake; their floating settlement serving their needs from birth to death.

But an unrelenting flow of toxic wastewater has poured into the lake – a by-product of industrialisation and aggressive agricultural practices upstream – and has slowly rendered it inhospitable, poisoning the water and almost everything in it. For fishermen such as Mohammed Yusuf, life on the lake has become intolerable.

“When we were young, our lives were very good. Every kind of fish was available. Our earnings were good,” he said.

“When my father would go fishing he would bring back over a hundred kilos of fish. Now the situation has changed. The fish is extinct because of the bad water.”

The wooden, flat-bottomed barge he lives in with his mother, wife, and their nine children, has ornate carvings but it has seen better days.

Now Yusuf can barely catch enough fish to feed his family, let alone save the money he needs to maintain his boat. He estimated they have just five years before it is beyond repair and fears he will soon have to leave the place where he was born.