Time for action

Enough of deploring Trump on withdrawing from The Paris Agreement, and other trivial matters

Enough of deploring Trump on withdrawing from The Paris Agreement. Enough of disseminating oodles of facts on global warming and climate change. Enough of keeping track of rising temperatures and sea levels in different parts of the world. Now is the time to actually do something. Now is the time to put a halt to the irrevocable threat of global warming that, if ignored as it is being, will prove to be a distressing tragedy. Now is the time to realise that green cover and trees are way more important than Orange, Green and Blue Line projects.

The sudden onset of toxic smog that has hit Pakistan’s second-largest city consecutively for the second time has put lives of hundreds of people at risk. As proven last year, eyeing it as a trans-border phenomenon will not solve the problem. The crop burning in Indian terrain comprising Amritsar, Jalandhar and Bhatinda might be a very good reason for increased levels of particulate matter in air encapsulating Pakistan’s Punjab but is not good enough to rationalise the phenomenon given that this practice is years old and so is the neighbourhood. It is true that the westward moving winds definitely carried straw particles with them, but what about the absence of rain for the past several months that has aggravated the situation to such an extent that heavy breathing and sore eyes has become a norm?

We need to rectify our facts on urgent basis. The Signal Free Project in Lahore bolted down 196 trees all along the route from Liberty roundabout to Fawara Chowk at Shadman. Those consumed by the Canal Road widening project amounted to 1,300. And the ones grazed on by the all-famous Lahore Metro Train Project totals to 2,300. Are the authorities focusing on replacing these, let alone adding to the green cover of the city? The Lahore Development Authority, back in 2015, pledged to plant 6,200 new saplings in place of the felled ones to maintain the equilibrium. The equilibrium, however, has been long disturbed and commoved. The only counterpoise that can better the situation and disperse the poisonous smog is rain for which we need green trees that are nowhere to be seen.

Are we ready to learn any lesson from this? The answer is no. And the most uncomplicated barometer to gauge the intensity of this ignorance is the ongoing cutting of trees on our land. Karachi too is bearing the brunt of ill-planned civic projects for several years that have resulted in cutting down approximately 47,000 fully grown trees, the devastating results of which have lately surfaced in the form of annual heatwave and other unusual climatic lineaments. The air pollution caused by ever-decreasing precipitation and elevating level of fine particulate matter results in almost 60,000 deaths per annum. Are we even going to address this issue?

The list of projects that require the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency review of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) include those in energy sector, manufacturing and processing, mining and mineral processing, transport (airports, ports, railway works and highways or major roads), dams and irrigation, water supply and treatment, and waste disposal. It is still a mystery as to how these projects were even issued positive EIA reports that allowed for unplanned logging of trees. When such reports are meant to serve the purpose of assessing the environmental consequences that a proposed plan or project will have, how could our environment protection agencies unintentionally overlook or willingly neglect the dire aftermaths of such unnecessary projects, the trade-off of which is the toxic smog we all are breathing.

Putting blame on India and the vehicular exhaust is an easy way out; instead the amount of dust and other particulates in the air in Punjab should be estimated to articulate an efficient strategy. The solution is two-fold: either act now or get ready to become home to a myriad of respiratory and developing diseases.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2017.

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