Islamabad:
The Federal Minister of Planning Ahsan IQBAL on Wednesday seemed to be alarmed in the face of the uncontrolled conversion of fertile agricultural land into housing companies, which described it as “existential” threat of the country’s food security.
As a tendency to an imminent crisis, Iqbal warned that the creeping propagation of real estate developments on arable land could compromise the country’s ability to feed future generations.
“Will the generations to come enough to eat?” He asked, adding that food security was threatened serious and immediate.
The federal minister expressed these points of view while presiding over a high -level meeting to resolve the issue.
The meeting was followed by senior officials of the federal and provincial departments, the capital Development Authority (CDA) and the representatives of the ministries concerned.
Iqbal stressed that urgent measures must be adopted to reverse this trend, in particular by promoting vertical construction in cities like Islamabad to reduce horizontal urban sprawl.
He also urged strict laws to slow down deforestation, qualifying environmental preservation a shared national responsibility.
The Minister has ordered provincial authorities to compile data on the extent of lost agricultural land against housing regimes in the past two decades. He noted that the absence of good urban planning had thwarted infrastructure and triggered systemic crises.
“We sell our food future by blindly consuming agricultural land,” he deplored. “The environmental balance in Pakistan is deteriorating; the housing of greed devours agricultural land.”
