Mangroves in Mai Kolachi face destruction

KARACHI - Mai Kolachi, the area that once had a significance due to its ecological impacts on the City, today is facing degradation at mass scale as the mangroves sites have lost all its potential due to fast cutting of mangrove forests. 'One Mile SquareMai Kolachi is a project by Nukta Art Magazine which invited four visual artists from Karachi, Arif Mehmood, Adeel-uz-Zafar, Fraz Abdul Mateen and Nameera Ahmad to engage their art work in the environmental and human context about this coastal belt. Untreated garbage, commercial greed and negligence has deprived the place from its heritage site and transforming it into an unplanned construction. Mehmood has been capturing Karachi on lens forn the last 16 years, but he never before he used his lens on capturing the Mai Kolachi expressway. He said: These images made me think about the issues which are affecting us and also about the inhabitants who are oblivious to this imbalance caused by land reclamation. Adeel-uz-Zafar constructed pieces to form a map of the designated one square mile of Mai Kolachi. He introduced his piece of work as comments on the dynamics of displacement which have been experienced by the local inhabitants. Another artist Fraz Abdul Mateen said, In my work, I have tried to convey how effortless the whole process of removing nature with the man-made structure. How oblivious are we of our own environment. Nameera Ahmad said that her project revolved around 'Destruction, Desolation and Activism. She attributed the fact that the trilogy focuses on the destruction caused to the harbor, artificial landscape and finally how the people stand up against the depletion of forest and their effect on the environment. Earlier, Tahir Qureshi of IUCN explained the importance of mangroves in a coastal city like Karachi and Ronald Dsouza of Shehri-CBM spoke against the landgrabbing schemes.