A PHOTOGRAPH published in Dawn of a once-flowing stream in the heart of Islamabad, now dry and filled with debris, testifies to the incalculable harm inflicted on our environment by the stone-quarrying and crushing activities in the surrounding Margalla Hills. Quarrying in the Margallas has not only caused natural streams to dry up as a consequence of deposits of stones but has also damaged numerous aqueducts, culverts and water tunnels causing water wastage and contamination. The activity is also denuding the Margallas of their green cover, besides accelerating soil erosion and destroying archaeological sites — this is happening even though the Margalla Hills were designated as a national park by the federal government in 1980. The government, with the support of civil society, had in the 1990s managed to curtail stone-quarrying and crushing in several valleys but today the decimated Margallas are a sorry picture of our failure to completely put a stop to such activity, particularly in certain parts of the terrain near Taxila under the jurisdiction of the Punjab government.

With 2009 being the National Year of Environment, the government has shown some resolve against quarry masters and stone crushers. Accordingly, a new high-level committee, comprising officials from relevant ministries and departments as well as representatives from international environmental organisations, met recently in the capital to focus on the issue. Success in saving the Margallas from further destruction will depend on how the plethora of federal and provincial ministries and departments cooperate to put an end to quarrying activities. These include the federal environment ministry, the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency, the Pakistan Railways, which operates a stone-quarrying and crushing plant in the hills, and the Punjab Mineral Development Corporation, which reportedly grants new quarrying leases and extends existing ones in the Taxila area of the Margalla Hills.