I grew up in an environment where witnessing unplanned dwellings and piles of garbage outside houses and by end of streets was customary. Water and Sanitation facilities in rural areas are highly degraded, which is alarming since 60% of Pakistan’s population resides there. Factories are pouring heavy fumes of toxic gases in the atmosphere and their effluents are altering the natural ecosystem of water bodies in which they are disposed of. Development at the expense of environment has been a prosaic activity and more than often loopholes in the system allows the escape from Environmental Impact Assessments of the projects leading the nation to an environmental fiasco. Even of now almost sixteen million people lack access to safe drinking water in Pakistan. For a pessimist it may seem like a zenith of impossibility and the convenient choice would be to give up. For an optimist it would present the picture of a battlefield where he is to fight and eventually win for his country and planet. I, for one, choose to be an optimist. And that’s how I began my journey towards earning a PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences.