The Supreme Court called for the commission to hold an inquiry into whether such tree cutting was legal, and ordered the suspension of Suleman Sheikh, the Islamabad Capital Development Authority’s director-general for the environment. Asad Kayani, a planning and design expert at the Capital Development Authority, said the body was planting more than 2,400 saplings across the city to compensate for the trees being cut. “Taking down old trees and planting new small trees elsewhere in the city is not going to help address the worsening state of air quality of the capital city,” she said. Riffat Naseem Malik, an environmental scientist at Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU), said tree cutting protests have helped the capital’s authorities realise that prioritising development projects at the costs of trees was no longer sustainable. Shams, who joined the protests against tree cutting, said the occasional tree has always been taken down in the city to make way for development.

Source: Pakistan Today December 11, 2017 06:33 UTC