Mangrove forests are not just any old woodlands. They are one of the most powerful natural tools we have to simultaneously reduce climate-change risks and protect ourselves from the impacts that are already here—and those to come 📝 arynebaker
—saving this tiny sliver of an island may seem a quixotic exercise, tilting at construction cranes when far more dangerous threats loom.Qaiser looks out at a formerly wooded area of Bundal Island, which has been illegally cleared of its mangrove treesOften dismissed as mosquito-ridden, unproductive swamps, mangroves are in fact bio-diverse ecosystems whose protection delivers more carbon-sequestration bang per buck than almost any other intervention. Though they occupy only 0.
Mangrove wood, cut from Bundal Island, is loaded onto a donkey cart in Ibrahim Hyderi, on the outskirts of Karachi. The timber will likely be sold for use as fuel or as construction materials in poor areas of the cityBut these days, mangroves are having a bit of a moment. Their astonishing carbon-sequestration capabilities—acre for acre, they store up to four times as much as—has spurred interest from carbon-capture investors.
The country also has—at least until recently—strong government commitment. In 2015, former cricket legend and politician Imran Khan launched a campaign to plant 1 billion trees in an effort to combat the consequences of climate change in the mountainous province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where his party was then in power.
Karachi’s mangroves don’t get that kind of support. For all the successes elsewhere in the Indus Delta, the provincial capital is a glaring exception. Decades of development, illegal logging, badly managed irrigation projects, and the steady stream of untreated sewage and industrial pollutants have taken a toll, leaving the metro region’s once luxuriant forests in a precarious state.
“I didn’t go back for six months,” he says. “I was in mourning.” When he finally returned to Bundal Island, it was with a mission: “There was a need for action. It was a calling.” He and a fellow photographer started systematically documenting the illegal harvesting, going out to the island mangroves several times a week to note new cuts, and learning the marks that loggers would leave to indicate which trees would be next.
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