Sohail A Azmie
WALKING past those mountains in Kashmir, as we move from Muzaffarabad to Chakothi, reminds us a brutal reality of our insensitivity to nature; the mountains once full of trees and animals are now barren and unattractive. Deosai plains, called the World’s Roof, were once known for the brown bear; today rarely have that animal. Keepers of the national park told us that merely 100 odd bears are now left! Murree, the Queen of Hills, now represents a look of an urban city with green patches fast fading and replaced by the concrete buildings of housing societies. This perhaps is one of the most alarming situations that we face in Pakistan – the duo of timber mafia and the land grabbers! The road to Murree from Islamabad, which once was covered with trees and amazing green belt, has now been overwhelmed by urbanized dwellings murdering nature at will. We just have a small portion of Pakistan’s landmass as forests, i.e., 2.5%; whereas it should be about 33%. Salt to the wound is that Pakistan is losing its forest cover much faster than any other country in Asia. Yearly we lose about 1% of our forests. Major portion of this forest to land conversion is being used for housing and some for the agriculture. If this trend continues, we’d be left with no forests, that means no nature and the beauty of our villages and towns will disappear! This really calls for creating a broader awareness among everyone to value the significance of forests, nature and its role in our lives and future. It tells us loud that we need to reconnect with the nature.
Alan Weisman in his book ‘Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? (2013)’ gives plenty of examples, reasons and scenarios focusing on ‘how the planet Earth was destined towards a countdown for its fateful end!’. He argues that the limited resources on Earth have been consumed far more than its capacity and the time was not far when people would have less food to eat, less water to drink and perhaps an ‘environmentally hostile’ place to survive. All of this is happening, as Weisman contends, because of explosive population of the planet! The trend can only be reversed if population is brought under some strict check, else with the current rate of world’s births, the Earth would become uninhabitable. Though the census in Pakistan has recently been conducted but the results are not yet made public. It is, nonetheless, a safe guess to believe the population to be around 197 million, in 2017, with an annual growth rate of about 1.89%. With these parameters, Pakistan’s population in 2030 will be 245 million and by 2060, it would cross the figure of 400 million. These troubling statistics suggest further degradation of forests, increased pollution and a high stress on natural resources. Reconnecting to nature, in truer sense, means reducing number of people to preserve nature. Another aspect of the reconnection is to make people aware of the beauty of nature and its irrefutable bond with our survival as ‘human race’. This means sparing some open lands for wild animals, habitats for birds and forests. It also signifies reducing pollution and over-exploitation of natural resources and places. Once the ecological balance is disturbed by changing land from one form to another; and the nature’s equilibrium is interfered with by hunting down the animals and excessive deforestation then it cumulatively impacts the weather patterns, the rains and the seasons.
Nowadays, we almost switch from summer to winter and vice versa without the intermediate seasons, which once used to be an amazing feature of our four seasons! This arguably is because we did not give importance to nature and kept exploiting it at will, assuming that ‘nothing will happen’. Though Pakistan is not one of the major contributors in pollutants impacting the global warming yet domestically it does have pollution problems. Big cities, like Karachi and Lahore, have many areas with massive garbage and chemical wastes. Lahore’s old city and Karachi’s Layari are extremely overwhelmed by the pollutants and the municipal administrations seems to have no answer! No wonder, this is the consequence of absolutely uncontrolled in-flow of people to these cities. A place, an area or a dwelling that had the capacity to accommodate, for instance 100 people, there one can conveniently find ten times bigger population. Such a mammoth number of people virtually saturates all mechanics of a reasonable civic life. This leads towards slums formation, terrible poverty and a zero regard for the environment or the nature! Through a proper, workable and a meaningful mechanism from the Government is required to make people aware of population explosion and implementation of a policy where a family may be allowed to have no more than 2 children. Awareness about preservation of nature needs to be created where people may rethink converting the natural habitats of animals and birds into housing societies.
As per recent reports from Earth’s Endangered Creatures, brown bear, honey badger, striped hyena, leopard and snow leopard, which are all endemic to Pakistan, are critically endangered. These are some of the major animals, besides number of other small birds and marine animals, which are on the brink of being extinct. This adds to ecological balance being disturbed and would result into overall degradation of the environment. This indeed is a time of crisis and action – both at the Government and individual levels. Individually, we may plant more trees, help protect the animals and participate in campaigns aimed at reducing pollution and enhancing greenery. We can create awareness of population explosion among people we interact through discussions, exchange of ideas and social media communications. The sooner we realize the role of nature in our lives, the sooner we would be able to appreciate protection of nature and finally making our country and the planet beautiful again!
—The writer is freelance columnist.
