The recent disclosures of provincial government's approval for an alarming deforestation drive in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has been strongly condemned by the Sarhad Conservation Network (SCN), an advocacy network dedicated to preserving natural and built heritage in KP.
"The clearance of over six million cubic feet of timber, resulting in irreparable environmental degradation, is a stark reminder of the government's continued inaction and complicity in ecological vandalism", said the former International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) head Mohammand Rafiq. The government's plans were cited in a news story in an English language daily, Dawn, on October 31. The story cited a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government report which informed the Supreme Court about the authorities' approval to cut down trees in the province over the last five years.
The government report came in the wake of a directive from the Supreme Court asking the provincial government to submit a five-year report outlining the KP forest department's annual budget, number of employees, timber permitted to be cut, the quantity of timber illegally cut, total forest cover of the KP province, reforestation and money spent on it and how it was determined.
The Pakistan-Tehreek-Insaf (PTI), the party founded by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, has governed the province for nearly ten years. It is the largest opposition party in the country. "It is scandalous; nothing short of a betrayal of public trust," said Dr Khalid Khan, a climate change expert, "and all the more damning for the fact that the government has owned up to responsibility."
It is pertinent to mention here that the PTI-led provincial government had in 2014 initiated the Billion Tree Tsunami afforestation and reforestation project in the country - billion trees on 35,000 hectares - and touted it as its major environmental project aimed at restoring the green character of the province.
Since 2023, when the KP was ruled by an interim government, the SCN and its members, drawn from all walks of life, have furnished evidence, penned opinion pieces, issued press releases, and produced media content to alert the authorities to the widespread deforestation happening in the province.
"The news item substantiates our greatest fears and observations, to which the authorities have, by and large, turned a blind eye and deaf ear," said SCN Convenor Dr Adil Zareef. "Another hare-brained destructive project of concretisation, erecting huge gates and palm trees on main Peshawar Road, is in the planning stage. There is total madness on all levels of planning and execution of projects without consultation with experts."
The SCN has consistently raised concerns about the rampant destruction of forests in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, highlighting the catastrophic consequences for biodiversity, climate change, and local communities.
He added the provincial climate change department should play its assigned role as all development projects undertaken by the Peshawar Development Authority, the district government, the KP Planning and Development Department and the transport, industry, with everyone following its guidelines, in the wake of the climate change challenges, like incremental change in weather patterns with extended and intense heat waves which pose a threat to the lives of its inhabitants.
"While the authorities make all the right noises about the need for building resilience against climate change, we don't know where the action meets the words," he said. "The loss of six million cubic feet of timber translates into irreversible habitat destruction for endangered species, increased greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbating climate change, soil erosion, landslides, and water scarcity. It adversely impacts local livelihoods, particularly for marginalised communities."
Dr Saima Hashim, a climate change expert, said, "this environmental catastrophe is symptomatic of deeper systemic failures including weak governance and regulatory frameworks, corruption and cronyism, lack of transparency and public engagement and inadequate enforcement mechanisms".
The advocacy group demanded an immediate halt to all deforestation activities in the province.
"Thorough investigation into the government's deforestation report should be conducted, and all those responsible for approval of deforestation prosecuted."
In its judgment on KP's report, the Supreme Court observed that forest cover in Pakistan had been rapidly decreasing, suggesting complicity or negligence of the forest department, which was supposed to protect forests. Instead of regulation, it has been hand-in-glove in this criminal activity over the years.
It emphasised that the forests were natural rainfall catchment areas as they ensured against flooding and avalanches. According to the decision, rainwater flowing into the streams and rivers must not be polluted. Deforestation, it said, results in unprecedented landslides and flooding while the diminishing forest cover is insufficient to enable the sequestering of greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels, which exacerbates the effect of climate change, the consequences of which are suffered by the people. Pakistan is amongst the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, the judgment said.
In 2023, the SCN team presented a pictorial report on deforestation to Pakistan Peoples Party's (PPP) Sherry Rehman, the former federal minister for Climate Change, to take notice of the timber mafia embedded at all levels of the KP government and engaged in "environmental terrorism" in the form of deforestation in all districts of KP. It also arranged a seminar and exhibited a documentary on deforestation in SDPI Islamabad.