Imminent tree slaughter and Lahore's canal road project

[LahoreEstate]

Lahore's canal road project is even more flawed, as many schemes are, and needs an urgent rethink.—Photo by APP


People who want to protect trees are not necessarily anti-development. They provide a much-needed antithesis, a bit like the socialists of old without whom the global capitalist system would not have been what it is today.

Some of these protectors have now gathered along the Lahore canal. They have also sent a request to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take suo motu notice of the canal road expansion.

Their argument is not anti-development. All they are asking is that the authorities correct their priorities. They say the Punjab government is going through with the project in violation of the Environmental Protection Act 1997, but their second argument is even stronger.

Citing examples from around the world, the canal campaigners highlight how certain parts of a city are more worthy of conservation than others. There will be few candidates for this place of preference in modern Lahore besides the canal which has for long been described as the city’s soul.

The critics say the government has alternative routes to work on, such as the ring road and other thoroughfares that should allow it to spare the canal, and that rather than obsessively widen roads it should concentrate on implementing traffic rules to ensure smoother flows.

Yet Shahbaz Sharif wants to expand the canal road and expand it post-haste, without giving the stakeholders a patient hearing. We don’t need to go too far to see the fruits of this kind of ‘official’ impatience.

The first two underpasses the Sharifs built on the same canal with much fanfare stand as monuments to the swiftness of their effort. These underpasses are on the left side of the lane when they should have been on the right to facilitate faster-moving vehicles.

The canal road project is even more flawed, as many schemes are, and needs an urgent rethink.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn...ter--bi-03