Karachi’s mangrove forests have been overlooked in their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forestall cyclones and tsunamis, and enable marine life to flourish through their life cycles.
This was the consensus reached by environmentalists who gathered at the Irtiqa Foundation in February 2025, to discuss the importance of mangroves. Experts highlighted the Indus Delta Blue project: namely the exchange of carbon credits between nations that reduce their carbon footprint and impose tariffs on nations that violate such guidelines.
Environmentalists say that in the1980s, Karachi’s mangrove forests covered 600,000 hectares, but now this area has shrunk to 160,000 hectares. The main reason has been the reckless cutting of mangrove forests. As a result, they maintain that two mangrove species have vanished from the Sindh and Balochistan coastal areas and only two types of mangroves still remain.
The average person fails to realize that cutting down the mangroves has also led to the rise in temperatures across the country, the participants maintained. They said that the destruction of mangrove forests has caused the temperature in Karachi to grow at the rate of 1.5 C above the national average. According to them, the increase in concrete buildings and cutting down of mangroves threatens to increase heat levels still further.