The factors for such a large number of deaths are multiple and out of them the factor to really ponder is lack of vegetal cover and trees – forestation, which has a tendency to modify the weather patterns by lowering down the temperature by a fewer degrees and attract precipitation and balance the carbon dioxide emission in the environment.
Currently, all the stakeholders are coming up with short-term proposals and strategies to save the lives of citizens in the upcoming heatwave but none is committed to come up with a serious and long-term solution to face the adverse effects of climate change.
However, Imran Khan has initiated quite a promising idea of ‘Billion Tree Tsunami’ in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa where his party is in majority. Rationally speaking, his party’s government would be unable to plant that number of trees in the province till 2018. But if they succeed to plant even half of their target and protect even half of what they plant, the upcoming years will be a great success and a considerable step to be appreciated to save mother nature, the people of Pakistan in general and K-P in particular from the detrimental effects of global warming.
On the other hand, Tshering Tobgay, the prime minister of Kingdom of Bhutan, gave an interesting talk in February on Bhutan being the only carbon negative country in the world with 72 per cent area under forest cover to lessen the effects of climate changes on the atmosphere and its inhabitants. According to him, the constitution of Bhutan demands a minimum of sixty per cent of the country’s total land under forest cover for all time.
On the contrary, the World Bank data paints a very bleak picture of Pakistan’s total land area under forest cover - at a very low 1.9 per cent in the year 2015, which has declined 0.2 per cent over three years. Pakistan’s total forest area is the lowest amongst its neighbouring countries. India, with the highest forest area stands out with 23.8 per cent, China at 22.2, Iran at 6.6 and Afghanistan at 2.1 per cent.
Witnessing the grim situation of the country, the policymakers in the country need to sort out their priorities and announce a national policy on afforestation to fight the threats being posed by climate change, so as to save the country’s future by increasing certain percentage of land under forest cover under a constitutional provision, just like Bhutan did.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 7th, 2016.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ