‘Level of forest depletion in Sindh should set alarm bells ringing’

On occasion of the International Day of Forests, a non-governmental organisation on Tuesday communicated its concerns over alarming level of forest depletion in Sindh.

“We are inviting an environmental disaster, which will cause severe ecological imbalance if no serious efforts are made to conserve state forests soon; the province is in a dire need of immediate reforestation,” maintained the president of the National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH) Naeem Qureshi.

In a statement issued by the NFEH, Qureshi was reported to have stated that the province was left with only 2.29 percent of productive forest cover; a sum way below the set international standards of 25 percent.

Quoting the government’s own statistics, he observed that Riverine Forests in the province were spread over an area of 0.241 million hectares while irrigation plantations were done on only 0.082 million hectares area out of a total of 14.091 million hectare area of the province.

Citing the provincial government’s acknowledgment, during an assembly session last year, of 108,569 acres of forest land being under illegal occupation, Qureshi said the admission itself was an indictment of provincial forest authorities.

The NFEH president said, “The depletion was a result of unchecked land grabbing and cultivation on forest land by influential feudal landlords.”

“Whether it is unchecked commercialisation of forest land in Karachi and Bani Gala, or the impunity that the timber mafia enjoys in Azad Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the situation in Sindh is however on verge of becoming irreversible,” he further stated.  

It was the right of Sindh’s people as much as it is of people residing in other provinces that they are provided with a clean and safe environment, Qureshi asserted.

“The problem here is that chopping of trees in Karachi, illegal occupation of forest land, and other unchecked activities causing deforestation across the province have for a long time gone unpunished.”

He said the government had launched a number of operations in Karachi to end lawlessness and that in riverine areas of the province to end virtual reign of bandits there but now it was high time to launch an effective operation on most indiscriminate lines for conserving and freeing forest land.

Further spelling out threats to Sindh’s forests, Qureshi expressed concern over the Indus Delta mangroves being exposed to the danger of rapid expansion of industries, port, power generation, and other commercial activities being carried out near the coastline for projects initiated as part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

He said that Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had launched a number of initiatives to promote irrigated plantations, tree plantation and to conserve existing forests in their respective areas.  However, he stated that in Sindh relevant government authorities were not even willing to pay a mere lip-service to the cause.

“What to expect of a government whose forest minister cries helpless when telling the provincial assembly about forest land being unabatedly occupied by a mafia in the province since 1985,” said a displeased NFEH president.

For these reasons events like the International Day of Forests go virtually unnoticed in Sindh as no noticeable public activity is planned to celebrate such occasions, he added.