Water, environmental crisis may worsen

Court calls for a review of the capital’s master plan on implementation of environmental laws

ISLAMABAD: With parts of the capital city parched owing to lack of water, a high court has warned that unless an effective environmental management plan is implemented on an urgent basis, the current crisis could in fact worsen.

It has hence directed the government to form a commission to review the capital’s master plan.

This was stated in a consolidated judgment announced by a three-member, a larger bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) comprising of Justice Athar Minallah, Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, on different petitions about illegal constructions and different anthropogenic causes of environmental degradation in the capital. The judgment was released on Monday.

“It is an undeniable fact that unregulated human activities such as illegal construction, urbanisation and violation of the Master Plan [of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT)] have serious consequences which inevitably leads to irreversible environmental degradation and climatic changes,” the bench noted as it highlighted a crucial dimension of different petitions.

The bench observed that Rawal Lake, which is a source of drinking water for Rawalpindi, is receiving untreated sewage and other wastes from the irregularly growing population in Bara Kahu, Bari Imam, Shahdara, Bani Gala and other adjoining population making the water highly polluted and toxic.

Similarly, the Simly Lake, the main source of drinking water for Islamabad, is receiving untreated sewage and other waste from Murree and newly developed colonies along the Murree Expressway which are polluting the water and rendering it unfit for human consumption.

The bench observed that by allowing illegal construction and unregulated urban sprawl in violation of the master plan and environmental laws is surely a death knell for the efforts to protect the environment and guard against the devastating effects of climate change.

The bench also underscored climatic vulnerabilities of the country such as the high rates of deforestation.

“Climatic changes are expected to have a wide-ranging impact on Pakistan, affecting agricultural productivity, water availability and increased the frequency of extreme climatic events," the court noted while referring to a report compiled by the Asian Development Bank.



It warned of floods, long spells of drought, and heatwaves — as is already being experienced in various parts of the country.

These symptoms, the judges said, raises a red flag for the policymakers and every citizen to declare an environmental emergency before the damage becomes irreversible.

The larger bench said that the availability of clean water or rather the lack of it, and the need to keep the environment free from pollution has a direct nexus with fundamental rights guaranteed to every citizen under Article 9 of the Constitution. It added that environmental degradation and adverse impacts of climatic changes inevitably result in the loss of lives, diseases and increase in poverty.

Citing the World Bank 2015’s study that environmental degradation was costing Pakistan almost nine per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Noting that the challenges of environmental degradation and adverse climatic changes have become too obvious in the country to be ignored any longer, they maintained that Pakistan also has a host of international commitments which ought to be implemented in letter and spirit.

What is required at this critical juncture is strict implementation of the precautionary principle in order to check irreversible damage to the environment, it said as it made the IHC Environmental Commission 2015 report an integral part of the judgment.

The bench further observed that it had been openly accepted and acknowledged that environmental laws and regulations were neither properly implemented nor enforced by either the federal government, the capital development authority (CDA), the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) or the ICT.

The court also identified other reasons for the ineffective implementation of laws including the lack of public awareness, non-functioning environmental tribunals and environmental magistrates, and a lack of an adequate and well-trained capacity for environmental governance.

The bench directed that it has become inevitable to review the existing master plan of the city and assess its efficacy.

“We direct the federal government to forthwith take steps of constituting a commission, inter alia, of professional experts, preferably of international repute, in the field of town planning, environmental management and finance,” the order read as it maintained that the commission shall make recommendations to the federal government and directed the government to complete the proceedings within six months.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2018.