ISLAMABAD: Forest area, a basic ingredient of clean environment, stood at a mere 5.3 percent of Pakistan’s total land area, a report citing the economic survey said yesterday. According to the Forest Wing of the environment ministry, Pakistan has about 3.8 million hectare of rangeland, and the only surviving forests in the country are the alpine grasslands of NWFP, the Northern Areas and the AJK.

“Apart from these relatively intact forests, around 85-90 percent of the country’s arid and semi-arid rangeland has been degraded as a result of the five-fold increase in live stock numbers since 1947,” the economic survey said.

Due to energy crisis forests are faced with the stress for fuel wood production, the survey also observed that, “it is extremely disquieting to note that the Juniper forests, located in Balochistan, are continuously being cut beyond their regeneration capacity.”

The state of Mangrove forests along the coast of Sindh was also heading in the same direction, despite the fact that mangroves play an economically significant role in protecting ports from the excessive accumulation of silt, providing breeding grounds for commercially important shrimp and fish larvae.

The survey highlights a bleak picture of the water quality in the country.

It says the water resources in Pakistan and the world over are under imminent threat due to rapid industrialisation, over exploitation, soil erosion, deforestation and untreated discharge of municipal and industrial wastes to rivers and other water bodies.

It said that water had become a vital challenge in South East Asian and Pakistan was severely facing the effects of water scarcity and was already ranked as the 12th most vulnerable country on a worldwide scale.