The NewsShahid Husain
The rise in temperature due to global warming is severely impacting the tree cover in Pakistan, Shamsul Haq Memon — former Secretary, Forests and Wildlife, Government of Sindh and consultant to the Coastal Development Authority — told The News. “We are witnessing a gradual drop in the forest covered areas. For instance, the forest cover in Sindh was 1.16 million hectares in 1981 however in 2003, it has dropped to 0.74 million hectares,” he said. He further added, the drought cycle 20 years before lasted for only three years: now the cycle has extended up to nine years. Drought, it may be mentioned, is the first sign of global warming. He explained that droughts affect forests the most. However, in Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), prolonged showers have led to the erosion of top soil, resulting in desertification, he said.Furthermore, he said though Pakistan is contributing very little when it comes to environmental pollution as compared to industrialised nations such as the United States, Europe and China but Pakistan can no longer afford to remain indifferent, as global warming is equally threatening for everyone.Memon elaborated that in desert areas such as Tharparkar, where the mainstay of economy is livestock, drought leads to human and animal migration which further depletes resources such as natural greenery. As a result, the phenomenon results in the over-exploitation of resources in a particular area. This, too, leads to desertification, he added. Moreover, forest cover is particularly threatened by the illegal logging of trees, thanks to the ruthless exploitation of tree cover in NWFP, he pointed out. According to a recent study, tree cover depreciation is not a concentrated phenomenon. Rising temperatures over the last few years are stunting tree growth across the globe. This significantly affects the ability of trees to store carbon dioxide, raising the atmospheric absorption of this greenhouse gas. Leading author, Kenneth Feeley, from the US-based Harvard University, presented his research on August 7, 2007, at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in San Jose, California, United States. His work was published previously in the June issue of the journal Ecology Letters.The study is the result of a 24-year-long research on tree species from the Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal and the Pason Forest Reserve south-east of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Researchers found that as many as 71 per cent of the plant species in Panama and up to 95 per cent of species in Malaysia showed decrease in growth rates. The increasing temperatures speed up the process of respiration in plants causing them to release more carbon dioxide. Feeley and his colleagues suspect that warmer temperatures also slow down the process of photosynthesis, during which plants take in carbon dioxide — although they emphasise that this is still a theory. “Global warming has diverse impacts on different types of forests. For example, if the summer monsoon changes its pattern to dry weather, the high hill forests in the northern areas of Pakistan will be adversely affected and, in turn, decrease the tree cover of the area,” said Tahir Qureshi, director, coastal ecosystem, the World Conservation Union, based in Pakistan (IUCN-P). “In the plains of Punjab and Sindh, the rivers will not overflow in case of floods, due to which the survival of riverside forests will be at stake. Furthermore, the mangroves of the Indus Delta will be deprived of silt and water.” he explained. “Pakistan will suffer a lot of losses and become dry due to the shifting monsoon patterns,” he added.
