After 1985, when they were barred from Gizri Creek, the fishers protested against the DHA with the support of the PFF. Eventually the DHA agreed to build a jetty near Marina Club where the fishers could keep their boats and continue their livelihoods.
To date, no jetty has been constructed by the DHA and fishers are still barred from Gizri Creek.
Land reclamation exposes Karachi to disasters
To minimise risks to life and damage to property in coastal regions, city planners recommend that developers leave a buffer zone between the urban and natural environments.
The original masterplan for the DHA development from 1975, which The Third Pole has seen, does include a coastal buffer zone, with a roughly 40-metre-wide road, footpath and expanse of beach between properties and the sea. In this plan, the DHA development finishes at Muslim Commercial Area, at the end of Sea View beach.
But Phase 8, which begins at Muslim Commercial Area, has gone far beyond the original plan: the Emaar Pakistan and HMR Waterfront developments are roughly 8 metres at most from the shoreline.
“The biggest problem of the DHA masterplan is that they change it on their whims,” says architect and heritage enthusiast Marvi Mazhar, who has written a report on land reclamation around Karachi’s coastline.
The DHA’s waterfront projects, she says, which are built on soft ground, are a rupture from its original masterplan.
In October 2021, the Sindh High Court issued a stay order to the DHA, barring it further land reclamation. It also restrained the DHA from “granting any reclaimed land to anyone, or creating any third-party interest on these lands or properties built thereon, or changing such lands’ use”. The DHA is additionally barred from using such lands for any commercial purpose, “as well as for holding any functions, including marriage or social functions”.
This means there cannot be any sale of property within the DHA’s Phase VIII development.
However, when The Third Pole visited the Emaar Pakistan gated housing project in April, estate agents were not only selling apartments but also said they can finalise any deal within just two weeks. According to one estate agent, 33 buildings are being built under the project, of which seven have been completed and are partially occupied. The Third Pole also visited several wedding halls, which were continuing to rent out space for weddings and functions.
A simulation exercise organised by the United Nations and officials in Karachi in September 2014 found that a tsunami could “wipe out” the city. With entire housing colonies built on reclaimed land, such an event could be a humanitarian disaster in the city of more than 16 million people.
In light of this, architect Mazhar stresses the need for coastal buffer zones, which she says can save lives and property from cyclones or the huge waves from a tsunami. Only dense mangroves can reduce such impacts, she emphasises.
Currently, more than 80,000 families live in DHA residential developments in Karachi. With Phase 8 due to be the largest phase, tens of thousands of families living in the new neighbourhoods will be at risk if a disaster like a tsunami does happen.
Against such an event, a seawall has been built for the DHA Phase 8’s waterfront projects. Tariq Alexander Qaiser, an architect and environmentalist who has spent decades documenting changes to Karachi’s creeks, says that such constructions cannot withstand a substantial wave. “The wave will hurl the wall up in the air and will break it,” he says.
Another disaster that has been heightened over the past 40 years is flooding. The Korangi and Gizri creeks are the final points of the Indus delta. The Malir River, a distributary of the Indus, flows into the creeks. In the past, Qaiser recalls, during heavy rainfall in Karachi the “floodplain of the Malir River [would become] visibly wide and it used to get filled during massive rainfalls in the city”. Now, due to development and land reclamation, he says the creeks have been narrowed. “Developments took place at the expense of floodplains.”
This shrinking of the floodplain means that water cannot flow through the channels and out to sea, instead entering the city and causing flash floods. At the time of publication, Karachi was still reeling from damage caused by floods triggered by this year’s monsoon rains. In 2020, dozens of people died in the floods, with huge damage to infrastructure.
“There’s a significant time lag in water drainage due to the narrowing of these channels, because of which the city gets chocked for at least six to seven hours,” Qaiser explains.
Waterways are less navigable now
Reclaiming large amounts of land from the sea has also altered the distribution of sediment along the Karachi coastline – a process called longshore drift.
According to Qaiser, in Karachi water currents move from west to east, traditionally depositing at Sea View beach – just before Phase 8 starts. But this pattern has changed, as land reclamation has changed water flows.
“I have observed extra sand deposition on the southwest side of Bundal Island which is some 25 kilometres from Korangi Creek,” says Qaiser.
As the shape of Bundal Island changes, fishers say their boats are getting stuck more often during low tide near Korangi Creek.
Asif Inam, former director-general of the National Institute of Oceanography, tells The Third Pole that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are not conducted objectively. Because of this, he says it is difficult to ascertain the exact damage caused by land reclamation.
But some immediate impacts can be measured. To ensure that container ships can move through Phitti Creek, east of Gizri Creek, dredging now has to be undertaken by the Port Qasim Authority (PQA). This work comes with a financial cost, Qaiser points out.
Shahid Hafeez, PQA’s director of channel dredging, tells The Third Pole that 5 million cubic metres of sand, mud, clay and slit is dredged every year from Phitti Creek. He was unable to comment on if land reclamation had changed the distribution of sediment, adding that hydrological experts need to gather data and carry out huge studies, which the PQA does not have the budget for.
Legal challenge against the DHA’s land reclamation
In recent years, momentum has been building as legal action mounts against land reclamation in Karachi.
In its October 2021 order against the DHA’s land reclamations, the Sindh High Court referred to reports that the housing authority “had occupied 117 acres of land in Phase 8 illegally and it had reclaimed land over 300 acres”.
Last year, six DHA residents filed a petition in the SHC against the housing authority for cutting mangroves and reclaiming land. Their petition linked severe flooding in 2020 within DHA developments to illegal land reclamation and the narrowing of the area’s water channels.
According to Muhammad Wajid, an advocate for the residents, Gizri Creek’s reclaimed land and all real estate projects being constructed on it belong to Port Qasim Authority (PQA, which was established before the DHA). In 2020, former minister for maritime affairs Ali Zaidi tweeted a picture of PQA’s jurisdiction. It showed that all of the DHA’s Phase 8 falls under PQA’s administrative control.
Legally, land belonging to the port can be used for no purpose other than that of the port, says Zubair Abro, an advocate with expertise in environment-related cases. This was established during a previous Supreme Court case against the Karachi Port Trust.
The DHA, Wajid says, therefore has no legal right to lease wedding halls and residential and commercial projects that fall within the PQA’s jurisdiction.
At least five wedding halls have been constructed inside the creek on reclaimed land. The DHA’s original masterplan has no mention of these sprawling venues (one covers more than 2 hectares), and Abro stresses that the DHA has no legal right to lease reclaimed land for commercial purposes.
In the petition to the SHC, Wajid contended that no approvals were given; no process for converting the land was granted permission; the public were given no opportunity to object; and no occupant of the project obtained any permission from the provincial environment watchdog, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).
SEPA, in a response submitted to the SHC seen by The Third Pole, stated that none of the wedding halls, marquees, clubs or Emaar Pakistan have obtained the agency’s approval.
For now, the residents’ case is pending. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a person with knowledge of the case told The Third Pole that the plaintiffs are planning to file a contempt case against the DHA and Emaar for violating the SHC’s October 2021 order.
As the legal battles rumble on, to this day the DHA’s rampant development and land reclamation continues, and the chance to mitigate a climate change-fuelled humanitarian disaster on the Karachi coast dwindles.
Abdul Majeed Motani, who has fished in these waters for over 50 years, reflects on the decades he has experienced of the DHA’s development. “There’s no future for us in fishing,” he says, adding that his children have opted for different professions.
This story was published with permission from The Third Pole.
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