The Pakistani Spectator

Terrorists grip Pakistan, At least 30 people killed in recent wave of target killing, Pakistan witness highest ever inflation, 20 killed in suicide blast, plan to dissolve local governments finalized ….and so on and so forth

We are the nation generally known  as not-so-stable country in the world let alone our contribution in protecting human rights or efforts to increase forest cover in the country but to my surprise also we did the latter. Yes!

After the distasteful wave of non-stop bad news we have finally been able to do something great, something that sounds pleasant to hear about, that portrays our positive image to the world and more importantly something to make us proud.

Couple of days back when I was on my way to home I heard the BBC newscaster on radio updating that Pakistan’s environment ministry has completed all arrangements to set up new Guinness World Record by planting maximum number of mangrove sapling in next 24 hours to break Indian record which they set up in Assam on 13th July 2009 by planting 447,874 trees in 24 hours.  Keti Bander’s coastal line will be the area in Thatta district of Sindh province -some 150 km from Karachi and three hundred people will take part in the exercise to break the world record.

This was indeed something new and amazing to me as Pakistan is not considered as environment friendly country. This information had obviously made me curious and I kept thinking for sometime how they would do that. I mean 500,000 is a huge figure! - On the other hand my lateral thinking had also been stimulated, pondering the deception aspects of their activity since our record in Fair Play is not so fair.

Next day the first thing I did was to check Newspaper whether they have really fulfilled their vow - surprisingly they had smashed Indian record. Guinness book of World Records confirmed that 541,176 trees were planted in the 750 acres of the Indus river delta region. Each group was issued saplings by a panel of experts and officials who also monitored the planting process to ensure standards set by Guinness World Records.

The record has been set under the two conditions of Guinness Book of World: 1) plantation was allowed only in day-light and was not allowed in artificial light; and (2) not more than 300 people were allowed to participate in the plantation.

Every line of that particular news was telling the story of triumph, the more I read the more I delighted but alas! Our highly commercialized mainstream newspapers didn’t allocate much space to this good news nor did our Tv channels since this world record do not sensationalize masses.

Our media’s ignorance towards such significant developments speaks volume.  Had Ms. Hillary Clinton called President Zardari they would have been publishing this NEWS as Headline or running as News alert to the extent of annoyance but who cares for environment and that Pakistan’s pride which cannot be capitalized.

I am also surprised that many fellow Pakistanis have either no clue of this event or they simply have no or little interest towards this development but whatever behavior they demonstrate at least in this case I am proud of Govt. (especially ministry of environment) and give credit to their sincere attempt to protect nature and to positively bring Pakistan in limelight.

In the end I would quote  environment minister Mr. Hamidullah Jan Afridi’s words who beautifully replied to that BBC correspondent’s question who asked that how these 0.5 million plants would help stabilizing Pakistan’s polluted environment. He said “these plants would not only help Pakistan in eradicating pollution, floods, storms, global warming but protect global environment too since nature has no boundaries”.

Courtesy: Pakistan Desk.com