Conservation: ‘Bird habitat lost with Canal Road trees’

Lahore Bachao Tehreek laud Supreme Court order.

LAHORE:

“We laud the Supreme Court of Pakistan for steering a direction for green and sustainable urbanization in Lahore through its judgement on September 11, 2013.

I am confident that this will revitalise cities and push them towards managed and balanced development”, conservation activist Imrana Tiwana told a press conference called by the Lahore Bachao Tehreek and Lahore Conservation Society in collaboration with WWF-Pakistan to protest what they called violation of the Supreme Court judgement passed by Chief Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani.

“The judgement preserves and protects the canal and its green belts for future generations of Lahore”, said Tiwana. She added that the judgment had been used as a case study at MIT and Harvard to show the power of a citizens’ movements.

The judgement said the canal and the green belt on both sides were a public trust, and should be treated as a Heritage Urban Park.  The provincial government had then passed the Lahore Canal Heritage Park Act.

Tiwana said that in November, 2013, the government had announced plans for nine U-turns on the canal bank road to make it signal free. “This intervention is a blatant violation of the Supreme Court judgement and the Heritage Park Act. Earlier, in 2012, the road was widened illegally and the green belts at three points”, said Tiwana.

Painter Aijaz Anwer said that in the wake of the Metro Bus project all of Lahore was being destroyed, just as Berlin was following the World War II. Anwer said trees along the canal were dying and more trees had not been planted to replace them. He said several footpaths had been demolished near Jallo.

“Unplanned and haphazard development is neither sustainable nor profitable. The purposed U-turns will cause grave environmental damage.  Building a flyover over Lady Willingdon Hospital is an absolute travesty,” said Nuzhat Saadia Siddiqi, WWF’s media and press relations coordinator.

World Wide Fund GIS Manager Urooj Saeed said “We have compared the satellite images of Lahore on various dates and found that there has been a loss of trees due to the widening of the canal road. They show that vegetation has rapidly deteriorated over the past decade affecting the habitat of indigenous birds and plants.”

Kamil Khan Mumtaz, president of the Lahore Bachao Tehreek, said that the government must not violate its own laws.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th, 2014.