Islamabad:
The Federal Minister of Planning Ahsan Iqbal on Wednesday sounded an alarm on Wednesday over the uncontrolled conversion of fruitful agricultural land to housing communities and describes it as an “existential threat” to the country’s food security.
Iqbal, who called the tendency for a threatening crisis, warned that the rapid spread of property development over arable land could jeopardize the country’s ability to feed future generations.
“Will the coming generations have enough to eat?” he asked, adding that food security was under severe and immediate threat.
The federal minister expressed these views while he was chairman of a high -level meeting to tackle the problem.
The meeting attended senior officials from federal and provincial departments, Capital Development Authority (CDA) and representatives of relevant ministries.
Iqbal emphasized that urgent measures must be adopted to reverse this trend, especially by promoting vertical construction in cities such as Islamabad to reduce horizontal urban spread.
He also called on strict laws to limit deforestation and call environmental protection a shared national responsibility.
The Minister ordered provincial authorities to prepare data on the extent of agricultural land lost to housing schemes over the past two decades. He noted that the absence of proper urban planning has strained infrastructure and triggered systemic crises.
“We sell our food future by blindly consuming agricultural land,” he complained. “Environmental balance in Pakistan worsens; housing greed consumes agricultural land.”
