Logging and consequences

Tussle between commercial imperatives of loggers and preservation concerns of the environmentalists is long and bitter

Forest cover in Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) has diminished by more than 50 per cent in the last 20 years, and the rate of deforestation is unlikely to slacken. The felling of banned species such as pine, kail and deodar continues; and despite being aware of this, the present government has lifted a logging ban that it itself had imposed shortly after coming to power. The lifting of the ban is likely to have far-reaching environmental consequences, not the least of these being the erosion of critical slopes and the consequent landslips often with disastrous consequences for mountain communities sited below the slide areas. There is an almost insatiable demand for good quality wood in Pakistan, not just for fuel in remote and rural areas, but as building material. Technically, the land that is being logged belongs to local communities in Diamer district of G-B under a deal they signed with the then-government in the 1950s; but the reality is that logging is controlled by the G-B Council (chaired by the prime minister) and the timber traders.

The tussle between the commercial imperatives of the loggers and the preservation concerns of the environmentalists is long and bitter. The pendulum has swung to and fro with a ban imposed in 1993 only to be lifted by the Musharraf regime in 2000. Logging continued recklessly until 2008 when restrictions were again imposed but the forest department did little to implement it and we now arrive at a situation that borders on the environmentally catastrophic. Forests thus stripped in a mountain landscape are slow to regenerate, likewise undergrowth that has been ravaged by unrestricted grazing of goats (to a degree reversed in recent years), and unless there is a brake put on illegal logging, irreversible damage may soon be caused. A meeting in Chilas on January 27 aimed at reviving the ‘Zaito’ committees, which are designed to enable communities to protect forests under their purview, may stem the tide; but there is big money to be made in the timber trade. Trees are set for an uncertain future.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th,  2015.

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