KARACHI, Nov 30: The mysterious metallic objects, which fell from the sky baffling villagers in Dadu late Wednesday night, were parts of Pakistan’s Hatf V Ghauri missile, a spokesman for the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said on Friday.
“The metal parts found in a remote area of Dadu, as reported in media today, were part of the motor body, which separated from the missile as planned, well within the safety corridor,” said a statement by the ISPR.
“It was ensured that at no point, would human life or property be at risk. There is no cause for alarm or concern,” the spokesman concluded.
Pakistan conducted a test of the mid-range nuclear capable ballistic missile on Wednesday. The liquid-fuelled missile, capable of carrying both conventional as well as nuclear payload, has a range of 1300 kilometres.
Fear and bewilderment overtook some parts of Dadu district after the mysterious objects fell on a number of villages late on Wednesday, the Dawn newspaper had reported.
The biggest fragment weighing 187 kilograms fell on a ground in Allah Jurio Lund village, 30 kilometres from Dadu. Other pieces fell on Pir Mashaikh, Shehak Rodnani and Khandhani villages.
There were no injuries or damage to property.
Military authorities were reported to have taken possession of the “heavy pieces of engine and other metallic objects, believed to be splinters of a satellite or missile”.
ISLAMABAD, Nov 21: Advocate General Balochistan Amanullah Kinrani on Wednesday apprised the Supreme Court that the BHP, the world’s leading copper mining company, which had been given a mining lease for discovery of gold and copper reserves in Reko Diq during 1990s was not registered under Pakistani laws.
He was appearing before a three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Gulzar Ahmed and Justice Sh. Azmat Saeed, that resumed hearing of a petition moved by late Mualana Abdul Haq.
In response to bench’s remarks, Kinrani maintained that the BHP had not been incorporated in Pakistan as foreign minerals mining company.
The chief justice observed that the Balochistan government should have known the fact as all foreign companies were required approval from the Board of Investment.
He told Khalid Anwar, counsel for Tethyan Copper Company (TCCP), that nothing like mining agreement existed prior to 1996 with the BHP, but a request for relaxation of rules was submitted.
He said the relaxation was sought when there was no agreement. “Show us any exploration agreement from any part of Pakistan with similar precedent. We will examine the instant matter on touchstone of the Pakistani laws.”
Khalid Anwar said when Chagi Hills Exploration Joint Venture Agreement (CHEJVA) was reached, there was no such requirement.
The CJ remarked, “Do not give such a free hand, we are a sovereign country.”
Khalid Anwar contended that the BHP was not entitled for such an agreement as it did not make any discovery in the area.
He said the TCCP had made a discovery in 2006 so why it was blamed for the acts of BHP.
Reading out Companies Act, he said under its provisions, Pakistani exploration companies did not require registration but it was a requirement for the foreign companies while his client TCCP was a subsidiary of the TCCA and a Pakistani company.
The counsel further apprised the bench that the negotiations for reaching an agreement for Reko Diq mining venture started way back in 1993 and after three years of elaborate discussions involving all the stakeholders, a consensus draft was agreed upon which had all the transparency.
He said the BHP made a generous offer of 25 per cent to the provincial government which was unprecedented in the exploration history at that time.
Refuting claims about corruption or any underhand deals, he said relaxation of rules did not amount to amending of Balochistan Mineral Rules of 1997.
Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, counsel for BHP, apprised the bench that they were contacting with their clients but the time difference was a matter and would assist the court with relevant record.
The advocate general Balochistan apprised the bench that barrister Aitzaz Ahsan was also engaged by the provincial government to represent it in the instant case and sought an order in this regard.
The chief justice told him that the court always welcomed everyone and had not stopped Aitzaz from appearing.
Aerial View of Hurricane Sandy (Credit: telegraph.co.uk)
When it comes to tropical cyclones like Hurricane Sandy, the climate links can be fairly difficult to pin down. On the one hand, humans have warmed the planet about 0.8°C since the Industrial Revolution. As Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research likes to say, that affects all weather events to an extent. The oceans are now warmer, there’s more moisture in the air—those things help fuel hurricanes and alter other weather patterns.
And yet trying to attribute specific hurricanes to changes in global temperature remains quite difficult. In its big report on natural disasters last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it had “low confidence” that humans were currently affecting tropical cyclone patterns. Hurricanes are far more complicated to study than, say, heat waves and the historical record is patchier. (For more on this, Andrew Revkin has an excellent discussion with climatologists over at Dot Earth.)
Looking ahead, meanwhile, scientists can say a bit more about future hurricanes—though only a bit more. The IPCC report noted that it was “likely” that tropical cyclones in some areas would get stronger, with faster winds and heavier rainfall, as the world warmed. The overall number of hurricanes, however, would most likely “either decrease or remain essentially unchanged.”
But simply stopping there isn’t quite right either. The chaos caused by Hurricane Sandy does highlight at least one other major reason to worry about climate change: rising sea levels. Note that storm is expected to be so devastating to places such as New York City in part because it’s coming at high tide. Here’s Michael Lemonick:
This nightmare scenario — for New York and the rest of the northeast — is especially likely because Sandy’s storm surge is peaking through three high tides, which magnifies its effect. At the moment, high tide itself is higher than normal because we’re right at the full moon, when tidal effects are at a maximum.
As a result, according to National Weather Service projections and an analysis by Climate Central, it is likely that The Battery in Lower Manhattan, Sandy Hook, N.J., and Atlantic City will see the highest storm tides on record during Monday evening’s high tide. Those records go back to 1893, 1932, and 1911, respectively.
Probability of storm surges greater than six feet around New York City. Source: NOAA
While storm surges are affected by a variety of factors, higher sea levels can help magnify those surges and exacerbate flooding — not just during freakishly large storms like Sandy, but during smaller storms too.
Humans, of course, aren’t responsible for the tides. But we are warming the planet right now, causing glaciers and ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise. In the mid-Atlantic region, the coastal seas have risen about eight inches since 1900–and about a foot in New York Harbor. “That means,” notes Lemonick, “the storm tides from Sandy are that much higher than they would have been if the identical storm had come along back then.”
What’s more, sea-level rise is expected to accelerate in the decades ahead—an additional two to seven feet by 2100, some scientists project. The IPCC concludes that it is “very likely” that extreme coastal flooding during storms will become far more common in the future as a result. And that’s a big problem for cities such as New York, as Mireya Navarro wrote in a prescient piece for the New York Times last month:
Unlike New Orleans, New York City is above sea level. Yet the city is second only to New Orleans in the number of people living less than four feet above high tide — nearly 200,000 New Yorkers …
With higher seas, a common storm could prove as damaging as the rare big storm or hurricane is today, scientists say. Were sea levels to rise four feet by the 2080s, for example, 34 percent of the city’s streets could lie in the flood-risk zone, compared with just 11 percent now, a 2011 study commissioned by the state said.
You can see how a combination of rising sea levels, tides, and storms could affect different parts of the United States with this helpful GIS mapping tool from Climate Central. For New York City, the map shows just a small chance of a major six-foot surge by 2020—it takes a rare storm like Sandy and high tides to pull it off. But as the world warms and sea levels rise, the odds of a big storm surge increase. Suddenly, that freak event won’t be so rare anymore.
The endless debates about whether this or that particular hurricane can be blamed on global warming are fascinating. But they can also distract from the more basic fact that our cities and infrastructure are quite vulnerable to future temperature increases and sea-level rise. And Hurricane Sandy, unfortunately, is a grim reminder of that.
Bamiyan, Oct 23 – If the high mountain lakes of Band-e Amir were not in a country in its fourth decade of war they would be world famous.
Outsiders lucky enough to see them today are often lost for words when they first set eyes on the ethereal blue of their waters and the Martian-orange and red cliffs surrounding them.
The lakes, in Bamiyan province, are Afghanistan’s first-ever national park, and draw thousands of local visitors every year. The government hopes foreign tourists will one day come too.
If that sounds quixotic now, so too may the UN and the government’s launch here of the country’s first-ever environmental protection plan – with a solar-powered kettle one of its signature initiatives.
But for those living in Bamiyan’s isolated mountain valleys, the most immediate threat is not the Taliban but drought, partly induced by human activity.
Climate change is making things worse and the lakes could be at risk too.
Glaciers in the province’s Koh-e Baba mountains, the western end of the Hindu Kush, recede further each year.
The climate adaptation programme, as it’s known, “is not luxury, it’s life”, says Bamiyan Governor Habiba Sarabi after climbing up to Qazan, one of 18 mountain farming communities involved in the $6m (£3.75m) scheme. The high mountain lakes of Band-e Amir draw thousands of local visitors every year
‘Disaster-prone’
Some 3,000m (9,800ft) above sea level, this is always going to be a tough place to live and farm.
But it’s got tougher as trees and vegetation have been cut down for fuel – creating the beginnings of a high-altitude dust bowl.
In an Afghan version of the Grapes of Wrath, more families are being forced to leave every year.
Like shaved heads, most of the hillsides are bare, with just the occasional stubble of green.
It also means villages are more exposed to “flash-flooding in spring and summer and avalanches in winter”, says Andrew Scanlon of the UN Environment Programme.
But he is now overseeing the planting of new trees and turf along Qazan’s valley.
Against the repetitive clanging of hammer on metal, workers in Bamiyan city are building scores of cleaner, more-efficient stoves.
The solar kettle is just one of the initiatives to help Bamiyan adapting to climate change
Run by an Afghan NGO called the Conservation Organisation for the Afghan Mountains (COAM), the workshop sells them on preferential terms to local villages and it already has more orders than it can fulfil.
Mr Scanlon wants to expand the scheme elsewhere.
COAM is promoting another energy-saving device, the solar kettle.
It is basically a large satellite dish which reflects sun-rays onto a kettle suspended in the middle.
The bigger the dish the quicker the boil – but the one they are selling for about $100 can make a cup of tea in 20 minutes.
Yet with Nato forces retreating over the next two years, taking large chunks of aid money with them, there are concerns whether this tentative momentum can be maintained.
The New Zealand run civilian-military provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Bamiyan is due to close early next year.
Catching up
There are questions, too, over the future of Bamiyan’s best-known landmark – the remains of the larger of its two rock Buddhas, blown up by the Taliban months before the US-led invasion in 2001.
The vast cave, or niche, carved into the mountainside 1,500 years ago looms over Bamiyan like a ghostly sentinel – and a permanent reminder of what happened.
But the niche is in “imminent danger of collapse”, says Brendan Cassar of Unesco – the UN’s cultural agency – and they need funding to shore it up.
Security concerns are pressing in too – from districts around Bamiyan where the Taliban and other armed groups have become more active.
That has had a knock-on effect on the small indigenous tourist trade here.
If foreign tourists are still a fledgling species here, Band-e Amir national park usually attracts a steady flow of Afghan visitors.
But there’s been a sharp fall in numbers this year, as the threat along the road towards Bamiyan has risen.
The park itself is still a long way from being managed like protected reserves elsewhere in the world. A guard with a piece of rope across the road is the gate-post.
There is little control on villagers who live next to the lakes. They have often used grenades and other explosives for fishing. Rubbish sometimes gets dumped in the waters.
But it is important to keep locals involved, “so they benefit”, says Mostapha Zaher, the energetic head of Afghanistan’s environmental protection agency – and grandson of the former king.
He admits he’s been called “unrealistic” for his dreams of developing national parks while the country is still in conflict.
But Mr Zaher insists it will happen, with plans underway for a second park in the Wakhan corridor – the finger of mountainous territory that takes Afghanistan all the way to China.
The UN deputy envoy Michael Keating, who has championed the environmental programmes, echoes his optimism: “Twenty years ago who would have thought Cambodia could become a tourist destination?”
To Afghans, the lakes are sacred waters and they believe have healing properties.
Perhaps one day, they will help heal Afghanistan too.
ISLAMABAD, Sept 23: The use of drones in Pakistan normally brings to mind images of US spy planes attacking tribal areas. But drones now are being used to capture a different kind of picture in the country – showing some of the world’s highest mountains being scaled by world-class climbers through some of Earth’s thinnest air.
Drones, or remote-controlled aircraft, have long been the domain of the American military and are used extensively in Pakistan’s tribal areas near the Afghanistan border to spy on and target militants.
Recently, however, civilians have increasingly turned to drones to shoot ground-breaking footage of adventure sports.
This summer a Swiss expedition used remote-controlled helicopters to shoot rare footage of climbers on the Karakoram, one of the world’s most demanding and formidable mountain ranges.
“People are going to see footage from the Karakoram that no human being has ever seen,” said Corey Rich, a photographer and videographer from Lake Tahoe, California, who was on the expedition.
The expedition was a joint project between outdoor clothing and equipment company Mammut, and Dedicam, a firm that specialises in using remote-controlled helicopters to shoot video. Their goal: to document world-class mountaineer David Lama and his climbing partner Peter Ortner as they climbed Trango Tower.
The sheer granite tower in the Baltoro Glacier is more than 6,000 metres above sea level and is one of the most technically difficult climbs in the world.
Filmmakers long have used helicopters to capture aerial footage of climbers – as well as other extreme sport athletes like surfers and skiers –that is hard to capture from the ground. But helicopters are costly and can be dangerous if they crash or get too close to the people on the ground.
Additionally, their beating rotors often kick up dust, snow and wind – and can push climbers off balance.
Drones, which can weigh just a few kilograms and cost between $1,000 and $40,000, are a fraction of the size and cost of the helicopters traditionally used in adventure photography.
Newer models tend to have all of their rotors facing into the sky, making them look a bit like a mechanical flying spider or insect.
The main concern for the summertime expedition was how – and if – the drone would perform in Pakistan’s rugged conditions and high altitude.
“The main challenge was that the air is much thinner, and we didn’t know how the flight controls would work with this and the propellers and motors,” said drone operator Remo Masina, from Lucerne, Switzerland.
He brought two on the Pakistan expedition – one with four propellers and another with six. From the ground, he flew them with a handheld console that resembles a video game console, and wore goggles to let him see the camera’s view.
Another challenge was to find the climbers on the mountain. Tracing the planned trek route, Masina directed the drone up the mountain until he spotted them – more than a mile (roughly 2,000 metres) away.
The result was stunning images of the Karakoram and the climbers making it to the top.
Experienced climbers say the Karakoram puts the rest of the world’s mountain ranges to shame. Neighboring Nepal has Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, but Pakistan has four of the world’s 14 peaks that soar to more than 8,000 metres above sea level, including the second highest mountain on earth, K-2.
Lama and Ortner said climbing the legendary Pakistan mountains was an amazing experience.
“Here there are so many mountains, and so many difficult mountains, and mountains that haven’t been climbed,” said Lama.
“That’s probably why the Karakoram is known as paradise for us.”
This year has been particularly successful for Pakistan’s climbing industry, which plummeted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US.
In addition to hosting the renowned Lama for the first time, Nazir Sabir, Pakistan’s elder statesman of climbing who was the country’s first person to scale Everest, said 30 climbers summited K-2 in 2012, the first summits from the Pakistani side of the mountain since 11 people died trying in 2008.
And the drone footage obtained during Lama and Ortner’s climb will expose even more viewers to the legendary Karakoram mountain range.
Drones also increasingly are being used in other adventure sports to push conventional photography boundaries. Cameras on drones have been used to capture video of surfers on Hawaii’s North Shore and to chase mountain bikers speeding down mountain trails.
“I’ve filmed anything from kayaking, rock climbing, mountain biking, to track and field to just casual walking,” said photographer and videographer Mike Hagadorn, who has begun to build his own drones to support his Colorado-based firm, Cloud Level Media.
“Anything you can dream of – and as long as you don’t crash – you can make it happen.”
Experts predict drone cameras eventually will become an integral part of every sports shoot. But for now, they re definitely a novelty. The Swiss team filming Lama said villagers in Pakistan stood in awe, staring at the drones as they buzzed around, whenever he used one on the expedition.
“We were trying to do this shot that showed this quaint village,” Rich said. “But every single person in the shot is standing, stopped in the street, looking up at the helicopter.
The alarming decline in a critically endangered species of vulture in Pakistan appears to have been halted, according to surveys of the birds. They indicate the population of the long-billed vulture (Gyps indicus) is stabilising.
The species had declined rapidly in the late 1990s because of the deadly effect of the cattle drug diclofenac. The birds died after eating carcasses contaminated with the drug.
Now fieldwork carried out in the Nagarparkar desert in Sindh, south-east Pakistan, by The Peregrine Fund, has shown that the population of the long-billed vultures has stablised over the past four breeding seasons with no obvious signs of decline. The 2006 annual report by the US-based TPF had reported 103 occupied long-billed nests, down from 290 in March 2003. WWF-Pakistan verified the same. In 2010/11 it counted 172 long-billed vultures in the same area.
TPF’s Munir Virani, now working as an ornithologist for the National Museum of Kenya, says banning diclofenac and increased awareness of the role of vultures in the ecosystem has proved effective.
Diclofenac was banned in 2006 and replaced by Meloxicam. However, the form of diclofenac given to human patients is still available and is sometimes given to animals.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s wild life authorities haven’t been able to reverse the decline in the population of the white-backed vultures (Gyps bengalensis).
In 2007, WWF-Pakistan had set up Vulture Conservation Centre in Changa Manga forest to retain and increase the population of white backs. About 22 birds from the wild were put in centre. However, the aviary has still not succeeded in breeding any from its stock. Last year a few eggs laid turned out to be infertile. Authorities are hoping the October egg-laying season this year would be different.
The forest, 50 miles southwest of Lahore, in Punjab, was once a stronghold of these birds with as many as “1400 active nests till the late 1990s” said Uzma Khan, project coordinator with the WWF.
Information gathered from 22 different sites (which had major colonies of white-backs till 2000), by the WWF in 2006 revealed only about 220 white-backed vultures remained in the Punjab. Today, Khan estimates there are not more than 100.
Early this year, the WWF also set up a 62-mile diameter vulture safe zone in the Nagarparkar desert. “The aim is to provide drug free food to the vultures close to their breeding areas,” said Uzma. It is also running an awareness programme for the local population and veterinarians informing them not to dump infected carcasses in the open and promoting the use Meloxicam.
Agha Waqar ki Motor Car (Credit: timthumb.php)ISLAMABAD, July 28: A Pakistani engineer has built a car that runs on water, a feat that left onlookers astounded.
Engineer Waqar Ahmad drove his car using water as fuel on Thursday during a demonstration for parliamentarians, scientists and students, Dawn reported from the capital.
He said cars could be driven by a system fuelled by water instead of petrol or CNG.
The onlookers were taken aback when they saw it and a cabinet sub-committee lauded the ‘Water Fuel Kit Project’.
Religious Affairs Minister Syed Khurshid Ahmad Shah, who heads the panel, said the engineer would have their full support.
The media report explained that the water fuelling system is a technology in which ‘hydrogen bonding’ with distilled water produces hydrogen gas to run the car.
Ahmad had earlier told Shah about the unique project and it was taken to the federal cabinet which asked its sub-committee to discuss it. During the demonstration, Shah himself drove the car.
The minister said that Ahmad would be given complete security and the formula would be kept secure. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf and Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh value the project, he said.
“We own this project and are committed to successfully completing it,” he was quoted as saying.
Buddhist Statue in Pakistan (Credit: timeslive.co.za)ISLAMABAD, July 7 — Pakistani police seized a large number of ancient Buddhist sculptures that smugglers were attempting to spirit out of the country and sell for millions of dollars on the international antiquities market, officials said Saturday.
The stash included many sculptures of Buddha and other related religious figures that experts say could be over 2,000 years old. The items were likely illegally excavated from archaeological sites in Pakistan’s northwest, said Salimul Haq, a director at the government’s archaeology department.
The northwest was once part of Gandhara, an ancient Buddhist kingdom that stretched across modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan and reached its height from the first to the fifth century.
Police seized the items Friday from a 20-foot (6-meter) container in the southern port city of Karachi that was being trucked north toward the capital, Islamabad.
Desertification is like skin cancer. If soil is the skin of earth, desertification is its cancer. Desertification can be caused by natural reasons such as prolonged droughts and anthropogenic reasons, such as deforestation, over grazing livestock on rangelands, wrong methods of irrigation which cause water logging and salinity. Desertification is affecting lives and livelihoods of 1.5 billion people around the world who depend upon subsistent agriculture and livestock grazing in the dry land countries of the world.
More than 50% of agricultural land is moderately to severely degraded now. With soil erosion 75 billion tons of fertile soil disappears every year while 12 million hectares per year is lost due to drought and desertification, an area with the potential to produce 20 million tons of grain every year. Six million km2 of dry lands bear a legacy of desertification. Due to land degradation 27,000 species lost each year and 70 to 80 % of expansion of cropland lead to deforestation.
We are living in a planet which is now subjected to red alarm; according to an estimate by millennium eco system assessment, world population is increasing by 150 people per minute, carbon dioxide (a global warming gas) increasing by 6,150 ton per minute, tropical deforestation is going on with a fast rate of 25 hectares per minute, while desertification is advancing by 23 hectares per minute and each year 12 million hectares of fertile land (half of UK size) is turned into desert, which could grow 20 million tons of grains.
United National Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is a global treaty which was negotiated to fight against desertification. The UNCCD made its presence felt on June 17th at Rio+20 conference at Brazil by organizing a grand Land Day, which was star studded by many head of UN agencies in a round table dialogue. “Zero land degradation” was the topic of the day. But do the delegates and heads of the state in Rio have the slightest idea about the future when in twenty years the demand for food, energy and water will rise to significant 40-50%, with increasing population. Land and soil are perhaps taken for granted and the top policy and decision makers are not willing to pay attention to this emerging issue of land degradation and desertification.
Land has so far not attained the profile equal to climate change and biodiversity; although these three babies (conventions of biodiversity, climate change and combating desertification) were born at Rio at the famous Earth Summit in 1992, but the “land baby” couldn’t get equal attention and care of her parents, like her siblings.
We know very well that the planetary environment is a single integral entity. The planet is warming up as a result of carbon and other gases, so where can we take zillions of tones of atmospheric stocks of carbon? Of course in the soil, and with land degradation, biodiversity is also lost, so we see a definite synergy here.
Zero land degradation looks like a super ambitions slogan at Rio+20, but do we have another easy choice to get rid of carbon dioxide, the notorious global warming gas? Of course not. We can’t simply continually ignore people suffering from hunger and malnutrition in dry lands of Africa and elsewhere. We have to catch this bull by the horns and deal with this accordingly.
In the context of UNCCD, much of the discussion currently is around soil science, perhaps because we have lots of people who are experts in soil sciences. Soil is no doubt important, but let’s not forget that soil is integral part of land, which has a direct relevance with “non-scientific” issues like land governance, secure tenancy rights to landless farmers and pastoral community and agrarian reforms. These are politically sensitive issues but have direct repercussion on the degradation of soil and food production system.
Private sector is trumped and touted as a savior of agriculture and deteriorating livelihoods of poor. But beware of global trend of land grabbing in disguise of investment on agriculture in poor countries. Land grabbing has become a threat to food production, security and food sovereignty in many dry land countries. Acquisition of large chunks of common community by multinational has set direct competition in access to land for food cultivation by local communities on one hand, and access to land by the multinationals for cultivation of non-edible crops and in particular agro fuel. The land grabs deprives small farmers and pastoral communities of their nourishing base which is land.
Pakistan has ratified the convention in 1997, but still has to demonstrate any serious effort to reverse desertification, as a dry land country, it is subjected to severe desertification in its rain fed and irrigated areas. Pakistan Government is also restless to embrace land grabbers in the mask of “corporate agriculture farming (CAF) companies”, who are eying Pakistan’s fertile lands to grow grain and export to their own countries, leaving local population “food insecure”.
As a nation we failed to protect our ecology and our land, a high rate of deforestation, urban encroachment in agricultural areas, water logging and salinity, over grazing and whole sale clearing of soil from vegetation for getting fuel wood is pushing us towards land that is fast turning into desert.
The need of time is to take this issue on war footing, promote massive trees plantation, saving existing forests from logging, discourage land mafia from occupying forests, leasing forest lands for CAF and “yaksaala” (1 year lease for cultivation in Tharparkar and other areas) and over grazing. We have to give up flood irrigation and adopt modern water thrifty irrigation techniques such as sprinkler and drip irrigation.
The government has to come forward and formulate a comprehensive agrarian reforms policy which could support farmers in attaining modern irrigation and soil conservation climate smart agriculture. The policy of corporate farming should be replaced by “cooperative farming” in which cooperatives of agriculture graduates should be supported to establish highly productive but eco-friendly farms.
Tanveer Arif, CEO SCOPE Pakistan, is an environmentalist and a land right activist. He is associated with UNCCD since 1992 as civil society member.
Thandiani hill station (Credit: flickerhivemind.net)Imagine for a moment that you get up one morning with a deep feeling of suffocation, darkness, depression and emptiness. You find the entire neighbourhood in a state of asphyxiation, gasping for every breath of air. Soon you begin to realise that a small group of rich, powerful, pampered and lawless individuals have sucked all the air and enclosed it in a huge glass dome for their exclusive consumption. They have also installed special reflectors that push all the sunlight into their massive private dome, leaving the rest to deal with the gloomy darkness.
The rich and the powerful also made sure that the dome encompassed the densest pine forests along with the most fragrant smelling flowers, lovely ladybirds, cuckoos, parrots, fireflies, beetles and butterflies. Thus the ordinary citizens are left with almost no element of nature that inherently belonged to all citizens. No longer did they have the right to access and enjoy the natural scenery, hilly resorts, forests and flowers. It was therefore natural for those outside the dome to feel very unequal, deprived and aggrieved. Their children will never know a firefly nor chase a butterfly. What was meant for everyone was now grabbed, allotted, purchased, cocooned and monopolized by a few.
But while it seemed blissful from outside, things were not as sparkling or serene for the spoiled rich brats who lived inside the dome. Propelled by greed and a desire to acquire and demonstrate their wealth and power, they began to do everything that was harmful for the beautiful natural environments they had managed to capture. They started to build huge and ugly houses barricaded by tall boundary walls destroying the landscape and blocking others from looking at the forests and mountains. To make it yet more exclusive, they placed large stones to prevent people walking on the scenic natural forest trails that passed close to their homes. In collusion with the government they began to cut the mountains to build roads that would exclusively lead to their personal residences. So what started out to be an open natural territory was now an ugly clutter of brick and mortar.
Some more obscene habits often associated with this self-indulgent class began to surface and to destroy the very peace and tranquility of this exclusive zone. The rich and powerful have a strong belief that life is meaningless without plastics, pampers, Prados and violating the law of the land. So they began to destroy the environment by throwing and spreading polythene bags, plastic bottles, used pampers, empty plastic cups, wrappers and disposable dishes. One could no longer walk on those majestic forest trails for they were now riddled with plastic, garbage and toxic waste. Atrophied by obesity and lack of exercise, these pampered delinquents and their accompanying urchins resort to high speed driving often in official vehicles consuming fuel and creating noise. The very peace and tranquility for which the exclusive zone had been created was now on the verge of a total collapse.
The above narrative, barring a few lines of “poetic license” is not just utterly true but also one that snugly fits the situation at the heavenly hill resorts of Nathiagali, Doongagali and other Galiyat. These wonderful gifts of nature are now being systematically acquired, allotted and plundered by the ruling and the wanting to rule elite of Pakistan. The booty is shared by those in power, the ministers, parliamentarians, bureaucrats, rich businessmen, their friends, relatives and cronies. The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government has already approved the plunder of yet another hill station (Thandiani) by approving 1,200 kanals for residential and commercial purposes. Likewise Rs100 million have been approved for developing infrastructure to facilitate similar devastation at Malsa and Beringali hill resorts.
The massive acquisition and personalization of the natural heritage that belongs to all citizens of Pakistan is a violation of the fundamental right of ordinary citizens of Pakistan. It violates their right to equality and equal opportunity, their right of access to natural resources and locations, their right to preserve the natural heritage and their right to move freely at hills and forests now usurped by the insensitive and self-centred elite of Pakistan.
Several studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that the rich and the powerful behave more unethically and more unlawfully than their poorer counterparts. No one could better exemplify the results of these studies (carried out at the University of California, Berkeley) than the parasitic lawless elite of Pakistan. They have not just taken over our natural heritage but also built on it hundreds of rest houses staffed and maintained by the state (at taxpayers’ expense) for the luxury of high officials. As an example, Rs3 million are spent only to maintain rest houses for TMA and DCO Abbotabad.
Even an organisation like PESCO that is facing losses worth Rs40 billion has no shame in grabbing a two-kanal piece of land in Nathiagali for building a lodge that will provide luxury holidays to those actually responsible for its losses. What we need is a government that will reverse these plunders and declare our forests and hill stations as a common heritage and shared property of all citizens of Pakistan.
