KARACHI:
This May felt different. The heat was not just high, it was angry. At 2pm, the footpath was too hot to walk on with bare feet. My area used to have neem and peepal trees on every street. In the last two years, most of them are gone. Road widening, new plazas, parking.
A city without trees is an oven. We keep blaming K-Electric for power blackouts, but we forget that trees were our first AC. One mature neem tree can lower the temperature around it by several degrees through shade and evaporation. Today, Karachi feels like concrete and metal. The air is hot; there is more dust and there is no shade for school-going kids or the elderly.
The cutting has to stop first. For every tree removed for a project, ten new ones must be planted before work even begins. KMC and private societies should make it a simple rule: no construction approval without an approved tree plan. We can’t bring back the old Karachi, but we can stop making it hotter for our children.
Muskan Boota
Karachi
