The International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi, on Saturday planted more than 300 saplings on its premises to create an Urban Forest. A variety of saplings of different trees were planted including medicinal as well as fruit trees, a communique said.
On the one-day plantation drive, Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, ICCBS Patron-in-Chief and former Federal Minister for Science and Technology, and Prof. Dr. M. Iqbal Choudhary, Director of the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, and COMSTECH Coordinator General, also planted saplings.
The plantation drive was also attended by a large number of students, research officers, and faculty members. Speaking on the occasion, Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman said that climate change, caused by global warming, poses a serious threat to life on Earth in the form of extreme weather, while trees were the best-known technology to cool our planet. Trees are the best technology to reverse global warming, he maintained. The creation of an urban forest in the ICCBS is, no doubt, an environment-friendly step, he observed. Defining the concept of urban forest, Prof. Iqbal Chaudhary said, the urban forest is loosely defined as trees as well as other vegetation growing in close association with people.
The concept of urban forestry is given by a Japanese botanist Akiro Miyawaki, in which saplings are planted much closer to each other resulting in dense vegetation that grows 10 times faster than normal. He also highlighted the health significance of urban forests and said that living near urban forests had shown positive impacts on mental health. He said that urban forestry played a vital role in addressing environmental issues, including those related to erosion control, noise and air pollution abatement, wastewater management, watershed protection, etc.
