KARACHI: The city’s coasts are fast losing mangroves shields as residential schemes and uplift projects erode into the natural protection unchecked, the WWF-Pakistan report said on Friday.
The report finds the coastal land reclamation and cutting of mangrove for commercial purposes as the major causes unleashing the marine deforestation on a massive scale.
Also hinging on the Sindh Forest Department’s figures, the WWF-Pakistan said that Karachi lost some 200 hactres of mangroves cover between 2010 and 2022, underscoring the looming threat to the natural resource.
The demangrovfication is also leaving the city’s coasts unprotected against the natural marine calamities such as windstorms, cyclones and sea floodings, leading every aspect of the urban living to an imminent disaster, it warned.
Geospatial experts at the Richard Garstang Conservation Lab of WWF-Pakistan recorded data on mangrove cover in Karachi over the last two decades using the Earth Observation Satellites, Remote Sensing and GIS tools.
In line with the findings, WWF-Pakistan underlined preventive steps to end mangroves obliteration all along the city’s shorelines, warning that inaction will help the deforestation continue till all the green shields are cleansed.
Citing the Sindh Forest Department, it said that the department planted mangroves on 55,555 hectares along the Sindh coastline, mainly in the Indus Delta, through their ambitious projects between 2020 and 2024.
It also initiated scores of mangrove reforestation and management programmes in collaboration with WWF-Pakistan and the International Union for Conservation of Nature Pakistan (IUCN).
As a result, the country’s mangroves forest cover scaled up from 1,338.16 km in 2016 to 1,573.57 km in 2020. Still, mangroves are faced with significant threats of logging on Karachi’s coastal belt, it added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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