Fighting global warming: ‘Tree plantation target for spring exceeded by 55m’

Over 200 million trees planted in three months

ISLAMABAD: By spring this year, 26.5 per cent more saplings than the target number were planted across the country.

Climate Change Ministry Spokesperson Saleem Shaikh informed the media on Sunday, that a tree plantation target of 153 million was set for the spring season.

“However, 208 million saplings were planted during the three-month spring season, which is a staggering 55 million more than the target,” said Shaikh.

This season begins mid-February and lasts till the end of April. The spokesperson notified that tree plantation targets were set twice a year, for the spring and for monsoon seasons.

He said that plantations during those two crucial seasons were essential in increasing the number of trees in the country, so as to help it fight its harsh climate.

“The role of forests in tackling climate change, particularly floods, rising sea-levels, erratic and torrential rains, and soil, wind and river erosion, is now being recognised”, Shaikh said.

Pakistan is home to forests covering an area of over 800,000 hectares, which constitutes five per cent of the total land mass of the country.

“But the country loses 27,000 hectares every year. Rising deforestation has exposed the country to the negative fallouts of global warming”, the spokesperson highlighted.

The present government has remained abreast of the country’s vulnerability to climate change and is taking all-out measures to boost climate-resilience of the country, he claimed.

“The climate change ministry has boosted its efforts and is in close contact with the provincial, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Fata to make the Green Pakistan Programme (GPP) a success story,” the spokesperson said.

“According to reports, two billion people worldwide still rely on forests as their primary source of fuel,” he highlighted, adding that woodland had a huge role to play in regulating water supplies, decreasing storm runoff and reducing pollutants in rainfall before it reaches local water sources.

Forests are also one of the world’s largest carbon sinks, absorbing 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year and storing billions more, Shaikh said, while quoting a report of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 4^th, 2016.