Corruption & Timber Mafia - Open Looting Of "Protected" Forests Powered Pakistan's Record Flooding

[hatrack]

There is a link between deforestation in Pakistan and the massive floods sweeping the country, said an official with the World Wide Fund for Nature. "Had there been trees, they would have lessened the intensity of the thrust of initial peaks of flood," said Ali Habib, director general of WFN, reports IRIN, the news service of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Flood waters now cover approximately one-fifth of the country.

There also is a link between Pakistan's "timber mafia" and the country's deforestation. The Herald Scotland newspaper quoted a Pakistani journalist as saying that Pakistani policemen took bribes from the timber mafia in exchange for allowing them to fell trees. The forests, he said, have been "ruthlessly exploited" by law enforcement agencies, politicians and bureaucrats for their own vested interests.

The logs were stacked in gorges, ravines and "nullahs," or steep narrow valleys. When torrential rains hit Pakistan, the force of the runoff from the country's tree-barren mountains propelled the logs, turning them into instruments of destruction that smashed everything in their path, the Herald said.

Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that 80 million trees had been cut down in the so-called protected Khebrani and Rais Mureed Forest in the three years leading up to this summer's floods. During that 36-month period, the forest had been reduced from nearly 20 square miles to barely 3 square miles.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Pakistan_floods_and_the_timber_mafia_999.html

[pscot]

1. These guys are environmental looters

Disaster Capitalists, stripping the commons for profit. It's obscene. They shoulod be tried at the Hague and their ill-gotten gains confiscated and used to provide flood and famine relief.

[AlecBGreen]

3. +1

like the sig line! :hi: same as it ever was

[glitch]

4. +punitive damages. Stripped down to having to rely on Social Security

and the kindness of strangers.

[jpak]

2. K&R - global warming + deforestation = bad things

yup