PESHAWAR, July 21: The NWFP government has launched a Rs40m project to plan land use across the province to conserve natural resources, particularly the agricultural land and control unplanned urban sprawl, according to sources.

Essential staff would shortly be recruited to start physical execution of the project which, said the sources, had been designed to serve the growing needs of society by ensuring that land was allocated to those uses which best served society’s needs on a sustainable basis and to minimize misuse.

“Misuse, rather abuse, of land is rampant in the urban, rural and hilly areas of the NWFP, so the province needs a comprehensive strategy to plan effective use of land and divide it into zones to avoid misuse of the precious natural resources,” said a senior development planner.

The project, entitled “land use planning and zoning in NWFP” and launched on July 1, 2003, would be completed in two years during which period digital maps of the entire NWFP would be developed.

It envisages developing a land use plan, identifying different categories of land and assessing the existing land use situation in the NWFP by conducting a study based on spatial, non-spatial and satellite imageries.

The provincial government would execute the project entirely by its own resources in the absence of financial assistance from the internal or external donor agencies.

The project includes establishment of a remote sensing/geographical information systems (GIS) lab for land use planning and zoning in the local government and rural development department — the project executing agency — to plan, compile, update and analyze land use data.

The staff concerned of the planning and development department, local government and rural development department and district governments dealing with land use planning would be trained under the project.

The key objective of the project, said a senior government functionary, was to put to an end the conversion of fertile land into industrial, commercial or residential areas — a practice which goes unchecked at present.

“In Peshawar,” said an official of the environment department, NWFP, “due to unplanned development, mismanagement, lack of land use planning and zoning the pressure on natural resources and environmental amenities has been increasing at an alarming rate. The quality of natural resources and life supporting system, including land, water, air and other resources are declining very rapidly as a result.”

A study carried out by the department of geography, urban and regional planning showed that in Peshawar urban uses had encroached upon over 2,700 hectares of prime agricultural land, and some 400 hectares of unused land were brought under usage as a result of unplanned urban development.

“This misuse and mismanagement of land is leading the city towards a number of environmental problems,’’ a document of the provincial government notes.

The northern and eastern parts of Peshawar involve fertile and prime agricultural land. But due to lack of planning and zoning the natural resource is being lost to other uses.

“This phenomena is not only taking place in Peshawar but also in other major cities, including Mardan, Charsadda, Mingora, Haripur, Swabi, Bannu and DI Khan,” said Arshad Samad, a representative of IUCN-Sarhad — the agency providing technical assistance for the execution of the project.