Capital’s greenery under threat

Rest of Islamabad can still be preserved if residents can convince SC to protect city’s greenery from ‘development’.

The bulldozers and excavators had already arrived on 9^th Avenue in Islamabad. Traffic was choked and digging had begun furiously in the tree dotted green belts. This was a couple of days before the public hearing for the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report was to take place on May 3. In fact, the public hearing turned out to be a joke on the public, as citizens of Islamabad were assured that the trees would be ‘uprooted and replanted at other locations’. Experts tell us that the survival rate of mature trees that are replanted is next to nil. It also turned out that the EIA was conducted by NESPAK, the same company that is building the Metro bus system, so clearly there was a conflict of interest.

The Rs44 billion bus rapid transit system that will connect Islamabad with Rawalpindi is being opposed by environmentalists not because they are against mass transit, but because they feel that this mega project is wasteful; they argue that the green belts of Islamabad, which give the city its unique character, should be conserved and that existing roads (particularly the wide 9^th Avenue and Jinnah Avenue) can accommodate any bus service that will run between the twin cities. “We are not trying to stop mass transit,” explains activist Bilal Haq, who is a member of the newly formed group, Islamabad Green. “We just want it modified to suit the character of the city… once the damage is done it is irreversible; we want to look after the city’s green belts.”

Dr Dushka Hussain and Christina Afridi, the other members of the group, point out that the Metro bus project was pushed through very fast without any discussion. “What’s the hurry?” they ask. Clearly this is a pet project of the ruling PML-N government and after launching the Metro bus in Lahore in record time, they are keen to have it up and running in the twin cities. Both are grand projects that give them great visibility — but are they the best use of government money? Lahore-based architect Imrana Tiwana does not think so. “These projects reflect the psyche of a nation; its distribution of budgets.” She points out that 70 per cent of the entire Punjab budget has gone towards the Metro bus in Lahore (for just one link from Ferozepur Road to Shahdara town). “For that much money we could have bought 3,000 buses for all of Punjab (30 districts of Punjab have no public transport).”

On top of it, no EIAs were done and there was no accountability for the project. In Lahore, one of the most polluted cities in Asia, 80 per cent of the residents don’t have clean drinking water; there are no treatment plants and are no footpaths; only six per cent of the residents own cars, the rest have to walk or use buses to get around, and out of a total of 500 buses in Lahore, 300 are not working.

The ‘Lahore Bachao Tehreek’ which was founded by Imrana and others in Lahore, did win a small victory in 2011; the Supreme Court declared the Lahore Canal green belts to be a public trust, park areas that were the heritage of the people. Is it too late to save the green belts of Islamabad? Perhaps for 9^th Avenue, but the rest of Islamabad can still be preserved if its residents can convince the Supreme Court to protect the city’s greenery from further ‘development’.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2014.

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