De plantation is costing us future

This June, Jacobabad recorded 52°C. Multan wasn’t far behind. Ambulances in Karachi and Lahore filled up with patients suffering confusion, seizures, and organ failure — classic signs of heat stroke. Pakistan’s summers are now a public health emergency.

But we keep asking the wrong question. We ask, “Why is it so hot?” We rarely reached the root cause, De plantation.

Pakistan’s forest cover sits at just 5.4% of land area, one of the lowest in South Asia, per FAO. We’ve lost trees to urban expansion, fuelwood demand, illegal logging, and failed replanting. We removed our natural air-conditioning.

Since, a mature tree canopy can lower ground temperatures by 5°C to 10°C. Forests also release water vapour through evapotranspiration, cooling the air around them. Without that, concrete and asphalt dominate. Cities like Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar now trap heat all night, turning neighbourhoods into ovens.

Mangroves along the Sindh coast and conifer belts in KP and Gilgit-Baltistan once buffered extreme weather. As they shrink, heatwaves last longer and hit harder. Barren land also means more dust, poorer air, and faster soil moisture loss — all of which make heat-related illness worse.

Fewer trees raise temperatures. Higher temperatures increase heat stroke deaths. Families facing medical costs or crop failure cut more wood, and the cycle repeats. The poorest — daily wage workers, children, the elderly — pay the price first.

Health departments need enforceable heat action plans: cooling centres, water access, and clear PMD red-alert messaging before, not after, casualties rise.

However emergency care is not enough. Pakistan needs ecological actions, including Upscale forestry : Expand the “10 Billion Tree Tsunami” with Miyawaki micro-forests in schools, hospitals, and housing schemes. Protect the existing : enforce logging bans in Balochistan, KP, and AJK, and hold violators accountable. Green Cities: mandatory cover with trees the parks, and green belts mandatory in new developments. Restore coast and farmland: Revive mangroves and promote agroforestry along canals and roads.

Heat stroke in Pakistan is not only a weather story. It is a policy story, a planning story, and an environmental story. Every tree we plant is a degree we don’t have to endure. Every forest we save is a life we may not have to count.

If we wait for cooler summers, we will wait forever. If we bring the trees back, the summers might become survivable again.