Lahore Bachao Tehreek (LBT) offers a successful case study for city dwellers to build activism around their right to be part of the development processes of a city, advocate and academic Rafay Alam said on Saturday.
Rafay, an active LBT member, was speaking at a seminar ‘Public Interest Litigation: A case study of the LBT’ organised by the Punjab Urban Resource Centre (PURC) at the Jinnah Public Library Hall.
A RIGHT TO TREES: “LBT began in 2006, when we awoke one day to red crosses marked on trees at the Lahore canal,” Rafay said, “We understood the marks to mean ‘ready to cut’ for the Canal Road Widening Project and a group of people, which included architects, urban planners, environmentalists, lawyers and students came together at the Nairang Gallery to form LBT.”
“While the project was about challenging urban planning models, we adopted the slogan, ‘Darakth Bachao, Lahore Bachao’ (‘Save trees, save Lahore!’), as a strategy to connect it to people’s experience of the city,” Rafay said.
“We were able to discover a provision that the project design had not met: no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) had been made, which was essential to the project,” Rafay said, “We immediately held a press conference raising the issue of the EIA which got noticed, the Supreme Court (SC) took suo motu notice and we were granted a meeting with the then Chief Secretary Punjab, who promised the project both to us and the SC that the project would not go ahead without the EIA.”
“An EIA was held, which we actively participated in and were able to make our arguments heard,” he said, this being the only forum that allows public participation in project planning stages. “That was 2007. The government then changed and in 2009, the Punjab Chief Minister restarted the project. At this point, we brought the courts into the matter again, and after two years of no agreement, the SC appointed a mediating committee.”
ACCEPTING A COMPROMISE: “The committee made 18-point recommendations, which included allowing the expansion of a 3.5 kilometre patch of the canal road, as opposed to a 14 kilometre patch, which most parties accepted,” Rafay said, “When the trees were culled it felt like we had lost friends in a battle, but we knew we had secured some guarantees as the court had directed the Punjab government to formulate legislation to make the Canal Road green belt a heritage park and recognised people’s right to it as a public space.”
To a question about the experience of using courts as mediators, Rafay said, “When we went to the SC, we knew everything would not go our way and we would be bound by the decision. What is encouraging is that the SC set some good precedents in the judgment.”
Commenting on the eventual project, Rafay said, “The Rs 400 million overhead walkways and the new barriers on the canal side were never discussed in the mediation committee nor mentioned in the SC judgment. I take the view that the spending is a waste.”
“One of the lessons for activists may be to think through the choice of opting for a mediation committee,” Rafay said, “Our view always was that the trees on the Lahore canals need not be culled and urban transport priorities need to be re-oriented.”
“One of our mistakes was to not be part of the final committees to implement the SC decision on the Canal Road expansion,” Rafay said.
ROAD EXPANSION IS NOT DEVELOPMENT: Presenting data on the use of different modes of transport by commuters in Lahore to argue for ‘right to mobility’, Rafay said, “Statistics show that 40% of people in the city walk to work while only 8% drive. But if we look at the thrust of government spending, it serves to facilitate the 8% over the other 92%.”
“Spending on roads is a waste. The focus of city spending must shift to public transport, to facilitate the majority who does not use cars,” he said, continuing, “The transport systems needs to be made pedestrian-friendly, cyclist-friendly and focus on public transport.”
“The argument that those who raise concerns about the environment are opposed to development is false,” Rafay said, “On offer is a different development model, which takes on board the benefit of the majority of urban dwellers and not accentuate urban inequalities.”
