Pakistan, July 26 -- Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has sought a report after Suparco images showed that tree cover around Rawal Lake Park had fallen by roughly half between 2004 and 2024. The images capture two decades of construction, encroachment and official complacency around a reservoir that supplies water to over 5.7 million people living in the region.

Rawal Lake Park forms only one part of a much larger catchment, and the satellite comparison cannot measure every ecological change around the reservoir. Its message remains plain enough. The catchment feeds a dam already burdened by sedimentation. Official reporting in 2012 found that Rawal Dam had lost 37 per cent of its designed storage capacity to silt. Clearing vegetation from ...