ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) on Friday directed the Capital Development Authority (CDA) not to cut down trees on Ataturk Avenue when the civic authority had already cut around 200 of the 245 trees marked for felling on the road last weekend.

Pak-EPA had in February this year granted approval to the CDA for the expansion of Ataturk Avenue, commonly known as Embassy Road.

Through a letter on Friday, the environment agency warned the CDA that in case of violation of the environment agency’s directive, the agency will proceed against the CDA under Article 17 of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997.

Talking to Dawn, Pak-EPA Director General Farzana Altaf Shah said though the environment agency had granted approval for the project in February, the civic agency was supposed to submit a list of the trees including their age and species before cutting them down, which the CDA did not.

Ms Shah said the CDA had felled the trees over the weekend in order to avoid EPA action. Asked why Pak-EPA had granted approval for the project, she said the expansion of the road is necessary and the CDA had chopped down the trees from the right of way and not the green belts. The issue is that it did not follow procedure.

The trees were chopped down for expansion of a road, which EPA had approved in February

The over 200 trees that were cut down also included pine, which takes decades to grow and the civic agency did not replant the smaller trees either. Officials of the civic agency question why the trees were planted on the right of way in the first place.

“We will follow the instructions of the environment protection issued [on Friday] but we are not at fault because the same agency had granted approval in February after a public hearing,” said CDA Project Director Waqas Farid.

He said there are clear provisions in the city’s master plan for the expansion of Embassy Road and reasonable space was left by the road as the right of way where the trees were planted on temporary basis.

The project director said the EPA had granted approval for the felling of 291 trees and that the CDA’s construction plans called for cutting down 245.

Asked why the civic agency had not submitted details of the trees which were to be cut off, the director said the submission of the list was a formality and that permission for the expansion of the road was already granted. He said the list was submitted the day after the trees were cut.

CDA DG Environment Dr Sulman Sheikh said the Environment Wing will be planting 2,400 trees in place of the ones felled, that budgetary provisions had been made in the PC-1 for the project, which will also include chir pine.

Islamabad is already losing forest cover and though the CDA claims it plants 500,000 trees a year, sources in the civic agency say there is no audit for the tree plantation campaign.

“We have not even numbered the trees in order to protect them from the timber mafia,” a CDA official said.

The official said the 3,500-strong Environment Directorate has failed in protecting the environment of the city and massive construction has taken place in the Margalla Hills National Park area and the catchment areas of Rawal Dam over the last decade as well.

“If the CDA planted 500,000 trees a year, the city should have been much greener,” he said.

Other officials Dawn spoke to said CDA officers are responsible for destroying the environment of the city.

“The green belts in Faizabad are being encroached on and illegal bus stands have been established on them and this is happening because officials help the operators to do so. Several katchi abadis have been set up on the beds of nullahs as well,” an officer of the environment directorate said.

The performance of Pak-EPA also comes under question. This agency has taken action while construction work was going on during mega projects after being pressured by the civic society and media.

However, it did not do anything to halt the Peshawar-Mor to new Islamabad airport metro bus project which was started in March this year without mandatory approval from the agency. EPA conducted a public hearing for this project two months after it started. It approved the project for the first section of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad metro bus project when half the construction work had been done.

“We are in litigation with the executing agency over the Peshawar Mor metro bus track project,” said EPA DG Farzana Shah, adding that the environment agency has been playing its role effectively.

“I request all residents of Islamabad to at least plant one tree. We will have a million more trees even if half the population of the city planted a tree,” she said.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2017