IT’S no secret that life is cheap in chaotic, crime-ridden Karachi. What’s not so well known is that trees are also falling victim to some of the many mafias that plunder the city for ill-gotten gains. According to a report in this paper, several thousand trees have been felled in the last few months to make way for advertising billboards. This wanton destruction is carried out with the collusion of officials from the advertising departments of the city’s two dozen-plus land-owning agencies that have the authority to allow billboards along its streets. Many such individuals are also running front outdoor advertising companies that rake in huge profits of up to Rs10 million from a single billboard through a corrupt system whereby permission for one billboard is used to erect hundreds more.

Trees serve a purpose that goes far beyond mere aesthetics. Aside from their many other functions, they have a critical environmental role to play in regulating temperature and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere; it’s for good reason that they are known as the ‘lungs’ of a city. Karachi’s citizens would do well to take a leaf out of Lahore’s book where the sustained and ultimately successful ‘Lahore Bachao Tehreek’ brought out citizens in their hundreds some years ago to protest the proposed felling of trees along Canal Road as part of a plan to widen that artery. It’s not too late for Karachi’s civil society to take responsibility for their city and prevent further assault on the environment. The fact that the advertising director of KMC, the agency that owns all major arterial roads in Karachi, can claim ignorance about the issue and pass the buck to the other land-owning agencies also highlights the disadvantages that come with multiple authorities laying claim to the city. Only by refusing to cede ownership over their communal assets will Karachi’s citizens defeat the advancing forces of avarice. Or has the city become an orphan, a land of opportunity for many, but truly owned by none?