Effects of Infrastructure Development on Health of Ecology

Abstract

The project under observation is of Lahore-Sialkot Motorway that is a north-south motorway currently
under construction in Pakistan. The 91 km long motorway will connect Lahore to Sialkot via Sambrial and is expected to
be completed by 30th December 2019 at a cost of ₨ 44 billion (US$420 million). Once completed it will reduce travel
time between Sialkot and Lahore to 50 minutes. The motorway is consisting of 4 no of lanes, having 7 - interchanges, 6 -
flyovers, 29 - bridges, 36 - underpasses, 33 - cattle creeps and 252 - culverts. In Lahore, the motorway will be linked to
the Lahore Ring Road, which will allow motorists direct access to the M2 and N5. The Interchanges given at different
locations connects the cities mainly the link roads emanating from N-5. The major cities along the route of the motorway
are Lahore, Muridke, Narowal, Wando, Gujranwala, Pasroor, Dhaska, Sambrial and Sialkot. Assessment is needed to be
carried out for evaluating the significant effects since it will plays a central role in future safe planning, designing and
execution of such infrastructure projects. A worksheet is specially designed for this purpose, applied on the specific LSM
Project and a Compliance Index is obtained which clearly indicate the safety level of the particular structure under
observation against health of Ecology. A value of overall compliance index is obtained as a result of different compliance
indexes for Land use, Crops, Animals & Birds and Environment (Air & Water). Effects on Land use, Crops, Animals &
Birds and surrounding environment depends on the physical condition of the project and their design level. The Weighted
Compliance Index obtained is calculated automatically with help of the worksheet. The Weighted Compliance Indexes are
then combined to give Overall Compliance for each category. Further, the Overall Compliances Indexes of four
categories give the Multiple Compliance Index for the whole Project. The value obtained in this context for Multiple
Compliance Index is 0.59, that is greater than the Mean Compliance Index (i.e Greater than 0.5). It shows that keeping in
view the key questions that were designed to assess effect of infrastructure development on ecology, shows that the project
is not good for health of Ecology. Therefore needs close consideration.