Of the 13 valleys of the MHNP maybe only four have any semblance of a national park.
ISLAMABAD: This is in reference to the article “Tunnelling through the Margallas” (September 15). The press has given extensive coverage to PML-Q Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed’s appeal to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take suo motu notice of the matter and bar the government from undertaking this project. He termed the digging of the tunnel a sheer violation of the law governing the Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP).
Armchair environmentalists, like the respected senator, also took the same view when the Punjab government tried to connect the Sui Gas pipeline from Murree for the villages surrounding the Ayubia National Park, in K-P, in 2006. Mr Sharif wanted the piped gas to reach the villages so that they would have no need to cut the precious trees of the national park for heating their homes and cooking. It was a great idea that was going to save the forest cover of the park. The Supreme Court was dragged into the fray.
The government lost the case and the million of rupees worth of pipes embedded along the road were lost. Thereafter, every winter some thousands of mature trees are cut down to provide for the cooking and heating needs of all the villages surrounding the park. This cycle will continue till this park will become a mere shadow of itself. The armchair environmentalists won and the Ayubia National Park lost.
The MHNP, which had three distinct parts, the Margalla Hills, Rawal Dam and Shakarparian, has already lost the latter two to housing around and on the lake and numerous cultural developments in the Shakarparian hills. Of the 13 valleys of the MHNP maybe only four have any semblance of a national park. The cutting of trees for domestic and commercial cooking, grazing of domestic animals and extraction of non-timber forestry products have seriously affected the park. The CDA (the park managers) is well aware of the problems but chronic shortages of park staff, poor training, lack of equipment, forest fires and plain lack of will have left the park in a bad shape. I see the tunnel project causing no serious threat to the environment of the MHNP and Islamabad. This project would cause no irreparable damage to the ecology and beauty of Islamabad.
I suggest that development projects, sustainable for the environment, continue and in the process all environmental laws should be followed. The tunnel should pose a minimum threat due to the size of the entry and exit points and the toll collected must share revenues with the park, so what little is lost in the construction of the tunnel is more than compensated by adding additional land to the boundaries of the park, increasing protection staff, providing more employment for our youth, better training and equipment, etc. The MHNP and the users of the tunnel could both be winners.
Anis Rahman
Published in The Express Tribune, September 19th, 2013.
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