My last week’s blog on Chilas elicited a flurry of emails and several readers pointed out that the article “gave some biased approach of the writer towards Chilas”. But now, there’s some good news from there.

I had written in an earlier blog about twenty-five years old Khan Muhammad Qureishi from a village near Chilas, who now lives in Islamabad where he is working and studying International Relations. The son of a policeman, Juma Mohammed Qureishi, whose family still owns tracts of forests in Diamer District, KM Qureishi had turned into an active campaigner against deforestation when he learnt about the order passed by outgoing Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf during his last days in office, to allow the transportation of legally and illegally cut 4 million cubic feet of wood to the rest of the country within four months.

Back in 2008 an order was passed by the federal government imposing heavy fines on the illegally cut timber that was stacked on the KKH in Gilgit-Baltistan (first it was to be heavily fined and then sold). Because the fine was too high, no one bothered to remove it. Then ex-PM Raja Pervez gave last minute permission to release it, setting in motion massive illegal cutting of trees since his departure. The axes soon moved towards Fairy Meadows and according to latest reports, the cutting of trees had started in Bagrote Valley as well.

KM Qureishi was informed by his friends and relatives back in Chilas that thanks to this last minute order passed on March 15th 2013, the timber mafia in Diamer had become active again and started chopping down as many as 1000 to 1500 trees per day. Outraged by this slaughter of trees in his area, he started knocking on the doors of all the big environmental NGOs in Islamabad: WWF-Pakistan, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Center, the Bioresource Research Center etc. He also approached the IG Forests and gave interviews to all the different media based in Islamabad, urging the caretaker government to take action. Unfortunately, the caretaker government did nothing and he almost lost hope. Then elections took place in early May and Nawaz Sharif’s government came to power and this issue was brought to their notice by environmental activists in the capital along with the Ministry of Climate Change (who said they were helpless to do anything on their own since the forest departments are under the provinces now – in this case the Gilgit-Baltistan Council – and only the PM, as head of the Council, could take action).

On June 28th 2013, during a session of the National Assembly, a call notice was brought about by PML(N) MNAs Maryam Aurangzeb (who once used to work for WWF-Pakistan and is familiar with all environmental issues facing this country) and Junaid Anwar Chaudhry about the misuse of the order passed by Raja Pervez Ashraf. An inter-ministerial inquiry committee to look into the issue was also formed. Finally, the federal government withdrew the controversial order with a notification from the Prime Minister’s office dated July 5 2013. The notification officially withdrew the timber movement policy and called for recommendations from the Gilgit-Baltistan Council and the Climate Change Division (the Ministry of Climate Change has now been demoted to a division) for further action.

This is great news not just for KM Qureishi (who sent me a congratulatory text last night, saying he had finally “succeeded in his mission”) and the environmental activists of Islamabad, but for the whole country. You see, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), only around 2.2 per cent of Pakistan’s landmass is under the cover of forests. Out of a total of around 1.687 million ha of forests, just 20.2 per cent (340,000 ha) is primary forest (the kind found in Diamer District)! These are abysmal figures even for a poor, developing country – I visited Bhutan last year where the forest cover is around 70 per cent. In Nepal the forest cover is around 40 per cent and in India it is around 23 per cent. The Indians are desperately trying to increase their forest cover and have formed a National Mission for a Green India with the goal of increasing forest/tree cover on 5 million ha of forest/non-forest lands and improving the quality of forest cover on another 5 million ha (a total of 10 million ha).

According to Helga Ahmed, an environmental activist based in Islamabad, “Our concern is that with all this deforestation, massive amounts of sediment will roll down into Tarbela Dam. Already the Indus riverbed is all silted up and this adds to the flooding. We need to re-vegetate the catchment area, stop the cutting of all trees and again impose heavy fines on the culprits (timber mafia)”.

The notification to withdraw the timber movement policy (despite all the machinations of the timber mafia who even arrived in Islamabad to meet with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to persuade him to change his mind) is indeed a great victory for environmentalists in Pakistan and KM Qureishi from near Chilas deserves a pat on his back.