Mir's Mini Forest

Just drive about 17 kilometres from Fateh Chowk Hyderabad towards Tando Muhammad Khan, and you can find a small green spot known as Mir’s Mini Forest along the road on the left side. A canal carrying fresh water drawn from Indus’s Kotri barrage is irrigating the land forest. An oasis between the agricultural lands of big landlords of Hyderabad, the Mir’s Mini Forest is a piece of green pastures, where an ecosystem is developed for growing trees and natural habitat for birds.

Spread over about 5 acres of land the Mini Forest is also a display centre for urban forestry.

With a variety of trees (about 400 different trees), the mini forest is a brainchild of a progressive landlord Mir Shah Mohammad Talpur. Although this forest is not designed on the pattern of the Urban Forest method of Miyawaki on which our other friend Shahzad Qureshi has already established an Urban Forest in Clifton Karachi, Mr. Talpur has also planned to utilise the Miyawaki method in the future expansion of his current forest.

Invented by Japanese Doctor Akira Miyawaki, who is a botanist and professor since 1980, urban forestry has an edge to grow trees rapidly in a natural environment. Using the Miyawaki methodology, one can create native urban forest ecosystems much more quicker. 15 to 30 different species of trees and shrubs are planted together, and the Miyawaki method suggests that each plant helps others to grow in a much faster speed. This plant community works very well together and is perfectly adapted to local weather conditions. It would take about 200 years to let a forest recover on its own, but with the Miyawaki method, a similar result is achieved in 20 years.

Mr. Talpur has learned the Miyawaki method from a trainer who came from India and he has also set up a small display at a piece of land of 3 by 3 meters by planting different types of trees by digging three feet and then replacing it with different grades of earth. “It requires a lot of investment and manpower for using the Miyawaki method and for the time being I have only two employees to look after this mini forest so this mini forest is grown on the traditional method,” he said.

He has imported many varieties from different countries and grown a number of local fruit trees as well.

Mr. Talpur allows families and groups from Karachi and Hyderabad and other parts of the country on a prior booking system to visit and explore the mini forest, where local fruit trees, honeycombs, birds and flowers are grown in a natural environment and environment lovers can spend their day time to be with nature.

A group of nature lovers from Karachi at the platform of The Linkers visited Mir’s Mini Forest on Sunday, November 22, 2020, and explore its natural beauty. Pl. click on the link below to look at some pictures taken by the writer.

Click on this link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/LKK7cg8FH5QAsjcB7

TharCoal Block-1: Plight of Warwai Villagers

The villagers of a well-developed but now under threat to demolish village Warvai near Islamkot town in the Tharparkar district of Sindh are spending restless nights these days as the government and a Chinese company’s high-ups have ordered them to vacate their centuries-old village because is now part of the Block-I of Thar Coal-cum-Power generation project.

Considered a model village in the desert area, Warvai is an oasis of human settlement where over 500 houses of different types (made from mud, cement and thatches) are located along with all other facilities like electricity, RO plant for water supply, a number of wells, 3 government schools including a separate for girls, a government medical facility and a number of mosques and temples.

But now 2200 people of the village are worried about their future as they have to leave their homeland because it would be part of the coal mining pit, which would produce 6.5 Metric tons of lignite coal annually (Mpta) which would then generate 1320 MW of electricity. The coal mining activity would last for the next 30 years.

Allocated to Sino-Sindh Resources Limited (SSRL), a China-owned company with some local private sector partners under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is a portion of the Belt and Road Initiative linking China with the Middle East and Europe, the Block-1 of Thar coalfield is expected to be fully operational within two years.

Work on this block has started and was in full swing as the mining area is entirely fenced and security is tightened. Only company vehicles can enter the highly guarded area.

At least four villages with a population will have to be resettled and Warwai is bigger of all of them.

“First they asked us to leave the village without paying any compensation, but when we protested, they presented two options to us: take money as compensation for homes or move to the homes, which the company would build,” said Noor Mohammad Rahimo, an elder of the village Warwai.

Village elders were divided into two groups on this offer — one group was in favour of receiving money, whereas another group was preferring to receive built houses from the company.

“Now we have decided that we would receive money as compensation,” Rahimo told a group of civil society and human rights activists who visited the village on January 25, 2020.

“We have other demands as well,” said Rahimo adding that priority in jobs be given to our youth and the company should provide us substitute for our 5000 acres ‘Gauchar’ — collective land for grazing of animals. In Thar, rearing cattle, especially camels, cows, buffaloes and goats is the main source of livelihood as agriculture solely depends on Monsoon rains, which are scant and often droughts emerge after two or three years. Traditionally, a big portion of the land is reserved for grazing animals and this land is a collective property of the entire village.

The villagers say every house is offered the same amount of compensation, but all homes are the same, some are concrete-built Pucca houses and most are Katcha houses in this village. This village has a mixed population as many are Muslims, but half of the population is Hindus. There are three schools in the village including one for girls and a middle school, religious Madressahs and shops in the village as well.

The villagers are an environment-loving community. They claim to have hundreds of thousands of trees in the village and Gauchar area, which they have protected like their children and no one is allowed to cut even branches of these trees. Thousands of peacocks are also living in and around the village and these birds are protected by the villagers. “No one is allowed to kill or catch peacocks, even though we don’t allow government or military men to hunt or kill these birds,” claimed a villager proudly.

All the natural assets of the area are also facing threats along with the human population due to the coal development. Villagers say they are reluctantly receiving compensation money because they are helpless and don’t have any other options.

But so far the company is not ready to further negotiate with the villagers and it has even withheld the money, which it was earlier offered to the villagers as compensation money. “We have forcibly stopped their work in our area,” claimed Rahimi. But the villagers also fear any police action against them as they said earlier police, Rangers and even Army used to threaten them of dire consequences if they resisted. Rangers had earlier established a check-post outside the village.

But villagers are sure they have to leave their homes anytime this year. But their bargaining position is quite weaker. So far many of the villagers have purchased lands for their homes in different areas in the Thar desert on deferred payment terms and they say would pay back when compensation would be received.

Villagers are desperately looking for a miracle to happen so they are not forced to leave their ancestral homes.

Listen to Noor Mohammad Rahomo, explaining the plight of villagers: 

Click Here to watch video