KARACHI  -  This is unfortunate that forests are hardly four percent of the total area in Pakistan whereas forests must cover at least 20 percent of the country as per international standards, says top official of the city.

The forest area is quite small in the country considering its requirements and that’s why it needs to extend the forestry throughout the country, he said.

“In last several years we have experienced the impact of global warming and the only suitable way to combat the effect of global warming is that we plant trees in huge numbers. The tree plantation is a continuous process which means we have to make sure that every citizen is sapling a plant at least once in a year and also taking good care of it.

“To give healthy environment to our future generation we have to adopt environment friendly policies. The city is facing a shortage of trees and greenery that’s why we need a lot of tree plantation so that environmental pollution could be minimized and citizens could get better environment,” he said.

These views were experienced by Karachi Metropolitan Commissioner Dr Syed Saifur Rehman after inaugurating the Landscape Project I at the University of Karachi on Friday. The Karachi University has launched Landscape Project I under which around 1000 plants would be planted on both sides of the roads from Silver Jubilee Gate till Azadi Chowk in coming days.

He expressed that in order to deal with this challenge Karachiites must take part in tree plantation campaigns and asked students to play their role in making their university and city clean and green.

“We have to make out city green and beautiful and have to adopt all necessary measures like we to make our homes clean and beautiful.” The KMC MC Dr Saif informed the audience that Brazilian Amazon forest needs no introduction but unfortunately it was not in good shape these days, one of its large parts has got fire and the government wants to build industrial zone on its one of the portions.

He said that humans for their own benefit had destroyed the ecosystem and damages the nature but we as Pakistanis must adopt a culture which promotes environment. The KMC Metropolitan Commissioner Dr Syed Saif ur Rehman further said that universities are considered as the crown of any city where besides availability of better educational standard, the environment should also be quite beautiful.

The KU Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi said that we have planned to make the university green and beautiful.  He further said that the university was working on policy making at different forums and the recommendations on landscaping, greenery and tree plantation would be submitted to the government.

“We have expert botanist here and would take care of the plants on permanent basis.  Students are also part of this campaign and planted saplings and taking the responsibility of their protection.” The KU VC Professor Dr Khalid Iraqi mentioned that Karachi University has 57 departments and 23 research institute. If every department plant 100 saplings one could imagine the result of this work and the beautification. Earlier, the Director Landscape, KU, Dr Fahim said that before launching phase one of the project we carried out detail survey and laboratory examination to check the quality of soil and examine what kind of plants could grow in the campus easily.