EVERY day in Islamabad for the past few months has been a battle between the city and its administrators. One may argue that the two have never gotten along, but the breakneck speed at which the new administration is inflicting its efficiency on the city is dizzying. Just last month, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) announced an open auction for 20 one-kanal plots to build a food street inside Shakarparian National Park on the “pattern of JBR Dubai”.

Now the latest victim of this developmental rampage is none other than the Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) — that serene backdrop of Islamabad based on which we lay a vague claim to being the second most beautiful capital in the world — and the weapon of choice is called Alexander Road. For context, this is a 7.5-kilometre road to be constructed through the Margalla Hills to connect Islamabad with Haripur at a cost of Rs600 million. The inauguration was done by none other than former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif at the opening ceremony of the equally contentious Margalla Avenue.

Building a road through this national park is not a new idea. There was the catastrophic tunnel project 10 years ago which envisioned digging a passageway straight through the hills onto the other side, and was brought to a stop with a Supreme Court suo motu. This is also not the first time ‘development’ has been thrust upon these protected zones. There’s the Navy Sailing Club on Rawal Dam, as well as the Margalla Greens Golf Club in E-8 — both declared illegal by the Islamabad High Court. There are also, of course, the glittering encroachments of Monal and accompanying restaurants, along with residential areas spilling into every part of the range.

Making matters considerably worse is the fact that a formal boundary demarcation of the MHNP is still pending — despite the Islamabad High Court ordering the CDA to do so last year. This boundary, which somehow simultaneously exists on all maps and yet seems obfuscated, has opened up several questions about whether land allocated in the Margalla foothills for golf courses and cricket grounds belongs to MHNP or not. Similar confusion abounds in terms of jurisdiction, for example, when the CDA chairman took to Twitter and contemplated the construction of a road from Bari Imam to Pir Sohawa, and the climate change minister had to step in and inform him that building roads through national parks was not within the CDA’s domain.

The latest victim is none other than the Margalla Hills National Park.

The construction of Alexander Road, in the meantime, has been halted by the Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change. In the words of the chairperson of Islamabad Wildlife Management Board, the project is aimed at “benefiting real estate” and not local communities — and herein lies the heart of the matter: the CDA’s commitment towards real estate development and land value appreciation. With the construction of Alexander Road still up in the air, lucrative housing societies have already been advertised at the Haripur end.

That notwithstanding, perhaps the most audacious aspect of this new scheme is that it was launched without so much as an environmental impact assessment. A CDA official has been quoted as saying that since a basic thoroughfare already exists here for local use, merely upgrading it into a proper road does not require an EIA. To reiterate: the CDA does not believe it requires an environmental impact assessment to build a metalled road through a na­­tional park. With im­­plementing state ins­titutions going rogue in this manner, legislation like the Islam­abad Nature Con­ser­vation and Wildlife Management Act, and the National Adaptation Plan will be rendered useless.

This is not the kind of frivolity we can afford with our climate realities. We can lull ourselves into complacency by repeating statistics about Pakistan’s low carbon emissions. While these might be accurate for the country as a whole, it is also true that our cities are among the most polluted in the world. Even if we launch frantic tree-planting campaigns in all our cities, it will not be enough to counter the damage done by our crippling automobile dependence. This is not to say that it should not be done, just that plantation drives must go hand in hand with reduced concretisation and cars to have any real impact.

But where are we heading when our administrators decide to do neither? As invasive as its namesake, Alexander Road represents the worst of both worlds: the desecration of a national park in exchange for more asphalt and concrete, more plots and profits.

The writer works on cities, local governments and climate change.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2023