We all are aware of the number of serious environmental problems that plague Pakistan, which are of great ecological concern in terms of sustainable economic future. These include soil erosion, pesticide misuse, deforestation, desertification, urban pollution, water logging and salinity, freshwater pollution and marine water pollution, just to name a few.

A staggering number of climate change campaigns have been produced nationwide with the purpose of spreading awareness on the drastic environmental changes due to human activities that have come to light over the years. On the same note, KBT (Karachi Biennale Trust) designed its flagship project Karachi Biennale 2019 to use art as a vehicle to discover, discuss and respond to Karachi.

KB ‘19

The second Karachi Biennale was held from 27th October to 11th November at different venues with great historical significance like Frere Hall, Bagh Ibne Qasim, VM Art Gallery, IVS Gallery, Karachi Zoo and The Mahvash and Jahangir Siddiqui Art Gallery, all the venues open for the general public, aiming at the representation of the devastating development footprint on ecology through visual arts.

The delineation of environmental politics through art

For an event whose theme covers the importance of ecology, Bagh Ibne Qasim, the largest urban park in Karachi served as an apt location.

A number of grasping art pieces, out of those what caught my eye was a huge branch of tree depicting the highest deforestation rate in Pakistan because of the “timber mafia” which operates in the country without license in the dense forests of Pakistan to benefit their own business and accumulate millions in their pocket illegally.

Another very intriguing piece that caught my attention were the bodies of dried chili peppers lined up with mannequin heads portraying the big loss suffered by the chili pepper farmers in production as 70 per cent of the rural population of Sindh earns its living from agriculture and livestock and due to the rotational system for distribution of water in the irrigation system, more popularly known as warabandi, the water does not get to the farmers very easily and has proved to have detrimental effects upon the environmentally fragile soils. On the other hand, keeping in view the adverse climatic conditions of the country, even a fractional rise in temperature has unfavourable effects on the production of chili peppers.

Poetic representation of ecological affairs

Following the strong visual artistry rendering to the deteriorating environmental issues, an interactive poetry session was organised in collaboration with Spoken Stage in the theme of environmental issues. A number of poets participated in the session addressing the serious impact of human activities on Mother Earth.

The romantic poets, often writing about beautiful rural landscapes as a source of joy, made nature poetry a popular poetic genre. When writing environmental poems today, contemporary poets tend to write about nature more broadly than their predecessors, focusing more on the negative impact of human activity on the planet. Critic Jay Parini explained in his introduction to Poems for a Small Planet: Contemporary American Nature Poetry, “Nature is no longer the rustic retreat of the Wordsworthian poet. … [it] is now a pressing political question, a question of survival.” Environmental poetry explores the complicated connections between people and nature, often written by poets who are concerned about our impact on the natural world. Poets today are serving as witnesses to climate change while bringing attention to important environmental issues and advocating for preservation and conservation.

Conclusion

My takeaway from KB ‘19 was that industries and human activities are becoming a direct threat to ecosystems. They are causing destruction, degradation, and the impairment of biodiversity and other natural resources. Human activities for the catastrophic development footprint is stressing the ecosystem, reducing its overall health and the accumulation of all negative impact from human activities is exceeding the ecological threshold of the planet. Nonetheless, such human activities need to stop if we wish to survive. •