Revitalizing Karachi Mangrove forests

Revitalizing Karachi's Mangrove forests

A journey through Karachi

The thesis tries to examine thoroughly the need to conserve places and utilize them as spaces. On account of the waste water, soil erosion, security risks and degradation of ecosystem (mangroves), reuse of the abandoned mangrove area and the reclaimed land, located in the heart of the city of Karachi, makes it topic of high importance under sustainable development.

From above the city, Karachi’s pattern of growth appears to be on the brink of an unsustainable path. Accommodating homes and jobs in a dense settlement of 22 to 24 million which is estimated to be 32 million by 2025 residents, means how efficiently the city is physically organized and connected matters a lot.

At the city level, Karachi is unable to manage and leverage its resources effectively. There is evident lack of facilities, infrastructure, water supply and waste water management as this is putting a big risk for human health, marine life and ecosystems.

If this urban wound get improved effectively, it can not only repair the ecological network and spatial texture, but also improve the efficiency of land use and value, and it can activate the suppressed area, at that juncture promoting the healthy and orderly development of society. By finding fine balance between them and utilizing the space to its full potential is very crucial to adequate balance of living environment.

While there is an agreement being made to regenerate nature to its former natural state, it cannot utterly be the same. By establishing active community to reclaim, restore and reusing the space for the greater use. Through means of responding to the context it can created an alluring recreational green space for the surrounding community, a place to visit, a place to learn from, and a place to appreciate art and ecosystem’s cycles.

How this design is able to satisfy all stakeholders, from normal residence to tourist, from land owners to environment/ecology specialists? How do we bring back the nature to the place, not only a beautiful sanctuary but a functional and life saving place for the people?

For protecting the natural landscape, the reclaimed land have been gradually closed down since 2010 because of the protest made by few formal communities and also ecologists and environmentalists. The environmental values of this place are considerable, with critical wetland habitats (sea-grass, mangroves, salt-marsh) supporting essential feeding, spawning and nursery sites for aquatic fauna.

The vision is to design the place to recall its former natural state by spreading another layer of ecological system on the top of the site. With the quest to redevelop these areas, lies the opportunity to re-imagine the definition of public space and green infrastructure.

This proposal sees what has been abandoned not as another urbanized area which destroys the face of the city even more, but as an opportunity to redefine the site location in order to create dynamic and engaging spaces and it will have an association and experience based function for the visitor. The project is aspired to accommodate different performance scenarios and to create permeable volumes of spaces that allow fluid movements between architecture and landscape. Creating a strong space throughout to celebrate by the people and environment.

This project recognizes opportunity in crisis. As a centerpiece of Karachi city, ecological restoration methods will heal a dying mangrove ecosystem while also reconnecting a city to its ecological and cultural heritage. Where it is not the epicenter of “cancer tumor” anymore, the project has the potential to elevate the city’s identity to one, based on best management practices where man,green and water exist in equilibrium.

Context

The 206 acre reclaimed land and 104 acres of mangrove ecosystem, partially polluted with wastewater is a dry/wet land in central, old Karachi. Adjacent to industrial area(logistic center and port of Karachi, one major park(which is dried out regarding lack of water supply and bad response from the residence around, and a demographically diverse mix of neighborhoods), this place historically functioned as a mangrove ecosystem and not this polluted , smelly water body seen today.

In 1990, roads appeared along the site and in 1997 the residential buildings started to build in an informal layout, destroying the mangroves on site.

Journey through Karachi now and then
Timeline showing the site history and project intention

Development from 1884 to Current

Research booklet

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Problem Statement

There are 3 major problems that are threatening the city of Karachi. These issues are Water scarcity, untreated waste water, cutting mangroves off in countless numbers and above all high population of the city is a major issue,which is the cause of the 3 major issues.

Water scarcity

The water shortage is a huge problem for Karachi’s massive population. The city is trying to increase the amount of water that it gets from the Indus River by building another double-canal, but even if they were to get political approval from the capital to take more water from the river, it would take a minimum of four years to build and on the other hand analysis shows that supply is not the only problem about the water shortage.

Other areas of Pakistan pump massive amounts of groundwater. But in Karachi, the underground water is too salty to drink. Many people have pumps but they use the water for things such as showering or washing clothes.

People collect water from a tank in Orangi Town, Sector 11, through a leak in its wall. - Photo by Naushad Alam

Un-treated Waste water

It has always been an argument about untreated waste water and how should we deal with it. Some people do not take this matter seriously. Pakistan is not alone in this, sea pollution is a growing worldwide problem, but Karachi is one of the metropolitan cities that directs most of its untreated water to the sea and considering it as it is not related directly to the humans life, which is totally wrong. It is hardly inconceivable in the country where the rule of building a house with basic amenities and primary services has to be planned, that is largely absent and yet, such a thing seems to be the reality. On Karachi’s coast, there are thousands of small industrial units that are allowed to let untreated waste flow straight into the sea for the want of a civic structure and the utter lack of regulation. A couple of years ago, the Sindh administration acceded that some 8,000 tons of solid waste are either dumped or end up in the Karachi harbor every single day. In addition, some 350 gallons of raw sewage or untreated industrial waste flow into the sea every day (and this is without the estimated involvement of high-profile residential areas).[1] According to a world bank report and many more research papers the ocean will contain more plastic than marine life in few years. A distinction is made between polluted water and solid waste, but the end-result contributes to the identical problem of the waters of this blue-green earth increasingly being poisoned. The city of Karachi, appears to willfully be poisoning itself and cutting off its own support lines for the future. Where the metropolis is killing off one of its major characteristics.

A boy sitting on the shore of Karachi Fisheries Harbor, Photo by White Star

Mangrove Illegal Over-Harvest

The river delta is home to the shimmering green mangrove, a delicate ecosystem that thrives in the mingled salt and fresh water. Thick mangroves have long protected Karachi, southern Pakistan’s sprawling metropolis, from battering by the Arabian Sea, but pollution, badly managed irrigation and years of illegal logging have left this natural barrier in a dangerous state. Experts fear that loss of the natural barrier formed by the mangroves could put the city of nearly 20 million people at greater risk from violent storms and even tsunamis. The rest has fallen victim to illegal loggers, pollution from nearby industry and changes to the river flow caused by irrigation upstream on the agricultural plains of Sindh and Punjab provinces.