Green Pakistan initiative: Climate change ministry confident about programme

Plantation campaign launched in schools to raise awareness

ISLAMABAD: The ministry for Climate Change (MoCC) on Monday expressed confidence that the Green Pakistan Programme (GPP) would help control deforestation and boost forest cover.

DIG Forests Abdul Munaf QaimKhani said, “ On the directive of Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif four projects have been launched under Green Pakistan programme to control deforestation”.

Speaking to the media he said that tree plantation campaign was the first step to control deforestation, in this mass scale campaign.  Forestation was focused and ministry launched plantation campaign in public schools of Islamabad to involve and motivate young the young generation and create awareness among them regarding plantation.      Second project was `Survival of Forest Resources in Pakistan,”An amount of 3.625 Rs billion has been already approved for the project in November by CDWP and now that project is in ECNEC and we are hoping that project would be approved in next meeting, DIG Forest said.

Besides this, there were the on-going programmes in provinces under climate ministry Given the fact that not only formal consent but also 50% financial share of provincial governments was a pre-requisite to formulation and processing of an umbrella project for accessing the funds allocated for the programme in the Federal PSDP. The federal Minister for Climate Change wrote anticipatory letters to the chief ministers of the provinces, Governor K-P( for FATA) & PM AJK in June 2016 to request preparation of PC-Is and provision of equal financial share for the programme.

Dr Raja Muhammad Omer told APP,” Ongoing  projects under world bank aimed to bring  all forest departments and of provinces, forest related communities and corporate sector on one platform for training and capacity building.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2017.