Climate change: Development disturbing Islamabad’s ecology, say experts

Call for arresting deforestation, urbanisation in and around capital

ISLAMABAD:

Meteorologists and environmentalists say the rapid urbanisation, developmental work and massive deforestation are the main causes of rising temperature in the capital.     

Environmentalists claim Pakistan is already among the top ten countries where unusual weather patterns are making major environment impacts, and the situation might further deteriorate in the coming years if attention was not paid to issues related to climate change.

An environmentalist at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Kashif Salik, said the capital’s environment was undergoing rapid changes since the past several decades.

Former Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency head Asif Shuja said due to widespread felling of trees and rapid urbanisation, temperature in the capital has started to cross 44 degrees in the summer.

“It is because of the new construction and uprooting of trees,” he said, suggesting that there was a need to take satellite images of Islamabad to gauge the most heat-emitting areas. “Once the major heat-emitting areas are detected, it will help take preventive measures to control rising temperatures of the city,” he said.

Shuja said that one of the best possible options to control emissions and global warming was planting more and more trees and using heat-absorbing materials. “After the devolution of the ministry of environment under the 18th Amendment, no project on protection of forests has been undertaken by any department in the country,” he said.

Dr Syed Faisal Hussain, an environmentalist at Comsats university, said the government needed to invest more on environmental issues in the capital to make it clean and green.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2014.