The Capital Development Authority insists that the chainsaws are saving lives. Over 29,000 paper mulberry trees have been removed since December–felled across Shakarparian, Fatima Jinnah Park, and the Islamabad Expressway–in a bid to curb pollen-induced respiratory illnesses. Each loss, authorities say, will be offset by three fresh saplings. A health campaign, they call it.
But not all the stumps tell that story. WWF-Pakistan’s field investigations show the cutting goes well beyond allergenic trees. In multiple locations, mature canopies have been cleared for roads, monuments, and infrastructure projects. In H-8 alone, five hectares of green cover have vanished. The health rationale, it turns out, conceals another agenda: development.
Paper mulberry is a problem. No qualms about that. Invasive, fast-growing, and the dominant source of springtime pollen spikes, it’s not native to this region and has outcompeted indigenous vegetation in Islamabad’s green belts. But as WWF’s forest director notes, sudden, large-scale removal without ecological planning destabilises soil, strips away undergrowth, and disrupts the habitat of urban wildlife. And yet, that’s precisely what appears to be happening; under the banner of public health, but without meaningful oversight.
What’s missing from the campaign is any trace of process. No publicly released list of species removed. No site-specific ecological assessments. No visible restoration work at key sites. The promised three-for-one compensation planting? Not independently verified. In fact, where infrastructure is advancing fastest, replanting seems more hypothetical than horticultural. The usual tools of environmental governance (impact assessments, disclosure, third-party monitoring) seem to have been bypassed or buried.
Meanwhile, green zones are quietly vanishing from the map. Reclassified as brown zones under Islamabad’s Master Plan, previously protected public spaces have been recoded to permit construction. Once excavation begins, revision becomes impossible. The replantation pledges that follow are less a remedy than a ritual. This would be reckless in any city. In Pakistan, it borders on self-sabotage. The country tops the Germanwatch Climate Risk Index for 2025, following the floods that displaced 33 million people and destroyed entire districts. In that context, urban forests are nothing short of fundamental infrastructure; absorbing stormwater, regulating heat, anchoring topsoil, and cleaning air.
Officials insist the removals are lawful, the replantations underway, the intentions noble. But when such plans align so neatly with new monuments and expanded roadways, it becomes harder to accept that line at face value. What’s unfolding in Islamabad is not just deforestation. It’s a slow, quiet redrawing of the urban contract; a shift from shared public greenery to extractive land use, sealed by unexplainable opacity.
