KARACHI CHRONICLE: Tree life and death

Officials of parks and horticulture maintain that every year eight to ten thousand trees are planted in Karachi. If that is true, then by now we should have achieved the target of one tree per person or 18 million trees flourishing in the metropolis. But official records show the reason why the city does not look as green as it should is that every year some 700 to 800 trees are lost.
There are a number of reasons for the loss of trees. The deteriorating state of law and order has led to many human deaths has also led to death of trees. So may trees are heartlessly chopped for security reason, such as the trees that faced the American Consulate and the hotel next to it on Abdullah Haroon Road. Nowadays road plantations near homes of ministers and official and near civil and military establishments, including police kiosks, have been cut down for better security.
August is the month when tree plantation is undertaken in Karachi. Since 2006 there has been no official drive to create public awareness to plant more trees, nor is the official target of 10,000 trees met. This is partly due to the law and order deterioration too. Parks and Horticulture department officials claim that it is simply impossible to plant trees when one does not feel safe doing the work of digging, manuring and setting the saplings, work that takes a long time. For the same reason it is also why there is no proper maintenance of saplings and a number of trees thus die even before they are properly established.
One official joked that the good news is there is a big decrease in timber theft because there are not many trees to cut down. There is no methodology in what to plant and where to plant. Quite often useless or harmful trees were planted on roadsides, in parks and even homes and official establishment's open spaces. In particular the eucalyptus. In the 1970s it was the wonder tree, because like Jack's beanstalk in the fairy tale, this tree grew to full size and maturity overnight.
It was the horticulturists quick fix tree that gave Karachi a green leafy aspect in the one year after plantation. Few thought what harm the tree would do. It is a water guzzler; birds do not nest in it because of the strong smell of the eucalyptus; fallen leaves also contain the oil and do not allow anything else to flourish under or near the tree. So since the Zia decade trees have been cut, or rather killed using acid because once established the eucalyptus will flourish even if a stump is left. The city is now quite free of this menacing tree but a problem still remains. The land where the eucalyptus grew is still unsuitable for tree plantation and it will take a long time before the poisonous soil can be reclaimed.
Another tree that the horticulturists planted for the beautification of the city is the conocarpus. The tree is flourishing since two decades but only recently, about three years ago, botanists of the Karachi University claimed that the tree is unsuitable.
However, horticulturists have not gone on a mad chopping spree of the conocarpus because people like the Director Parks and Horticulture believe that anything that can grow in Karachi soil is a gift of God and should not be rejected.
Tree plantation is not as popular with the public as it used to be in pre-partition times. This is because the garden concept has become Anglicized, with manicured lawns and seasonal flowers and perennial bushes. In a typical garden in our grandfather's time the garden was full of fruit and shade trees. For beauty there would be a row of roses mogra and motia growing in pots and the sweet smelling jasmine vines draping the boundary walls.
Karachi's water shortage is acute but nothing new, so the natives used to plant hardy trees like the peepul and barguth and perhaps a mango or neem tree. Except for mango, these trees were also planted by the municipality on the city's road sides. Today these hardy trees are not popular either with officialdom or the public.
The reason is that these trees grow to great height and interfere with overhead electric wires. A number of old trees have been mutilated to make passageway for electric wires, sometimes with unscientific pruning that the trees have died. The city's expansion also meant that these trees ended up in awkward locations, either in the middle of the new double-carriage road or the cross roads or blocking the realignment of a road. Down went the ancient, magnificent trees. Officialdom promised to replant them elsewhere, and in some cases they did do it, but the trees have not survived.
Environmentalists promote tree plantation in urban areas as one of the best ways to clean the city air of carbon monoxide pollution caused by emission from vehicles. But in the case of Karachi they have had little success in their mission. Even an organisation like the World Wildlife Fund for Conservation of Nature, is not focused on the need for trees in the city. It is devoted to mangrove plantation. Of course this is necessary, but who is to green the city? The government has lost its drive for encouraging tree plantation as it has also lost its drive to do anything constructive for Karachi, socially, politically and economically.