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To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-8947.2007.00162.x Byline: Abdul Waheed Bhutto (1), Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi (2) Keywords: Rural poverty; Agriculture sector; Population growth-agriculture growth-poverty alleviation linkage; Pakistan Abstract: Abstract Poverty is rampant in the rural areas of Pakistan, where people are in a state of deprivation with regard to incomes, clothing, housing, healthcare, education, sanitary facilities and human rights. Agriculture generates nearly 20.9 percent of the country's GDP and provides employment for 43.4 percent of its workforce. Most importantly, 65.9 percent of the population living in rural areas is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Rising population, shrinking agricultural land, increasing demand for water resources, widespread land degradation and inadequate infrastructure appear to be major concerns of the agriculture sector in Pakistan. An attempt has been made to examine the population growth-agriculture growth-poverty alleviation linkage. It is argued that agriculture will continue to be one of the most important sectors of Pakistan's economy for years to come. To alleviate poverty, it is suggested that Pakistan enhance the productivity of the agriculture sector through the provision of a series of inputs including provision of easy credit to the small farmer, availability of quality fertilizers and pesticides, tractor and harvester services, improvement in the effectiveness of the vast irrigation system and, finally, farmer education. It is concluded that the high rate of population growth needs to be curbed for increased agricultural productivity to have any significant effect on poverty in rural areas of Pakistan. Author Affiliation: (1)Dawood College of Engineering and Technology, Karachi-Pakistan. (2)COMSAT Institute of Information Technology, Lahore-Pakistan.

Cadmium (Cd) and Lead (Pb) from industrial wastewater can bioaccumulate in the living organisms of water bodies, posing serious threats to human health. Therefore, efficient remediation of heavy metal ions of Cd (II) and Pb (II) in aqueous media is necessary for public health and environmental sustainability. In the present study, water stable Zirconium (Zr) based metal organic frameworks (MOFs) with SO 3 H functionalization were synthesized by solvothermal method and used first time for the adsorption of Cd (II) and Pb (II). Synthesis of UiO-66-SO 3 H, nano-sized (<100 nm) MOFs, was confirmed by FTIR, XRD, FESEM and BET. Effects of contact time, pH and temperature were investigated for adsorption of Cd (II) and Pb (II) onto SO 3 H-functionalized Zr-MOFs. The UiO-66-SO 3 H displayed notable rejections of 97% and 88% towards Cd (II) and Pb (II), respectively, after 160 min at 25 °C and pH (6) with an initial concentration of 1000 mg/L. Adsorption capacities of Cd (II) and Pb (II) were achieved as 194.9154 (mg/g) and 176.6879 (mg/g), respectively, at an initial concentration of 1000 mg/L. The Pseudo second-order kinetic model fitted well with linear regression (R 2 ) of value 1. The mechanism was confirmed mainly as a chemisorption and coordination interaction between sulfone group (-SO 3 H) and metal ions Cd (IIa) and Pb (II). These results may support effective adsorption and can be studied further to enrich and recycle other heavy metals from wastewater., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)