Guzara forests: UNDP deliberating ways to compensate owners

Climate change ministry to hold meeting tomorrow

ISLAMABAD: Officials of UNDP held a meeting with private forest owners and other stakeholders from Murree, Kahuta and Hazara Division of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) to find a way of compensating them in order to stop the cutting of trees.

The UNDP is endeavouring to find some mode of compensation under the Global Environmental Fund (GEF) project on Sustainable Forest Management (SFM). In this regard, UNDP consultant Malcolm Jansen held a meeting with owners of guzara forests and other stakeholders in Ghora Gali, Murree on Saturday. In order to finalise the project document, the Ministry of Climate Change (MOCC) will hold a national-level consultative meeting on May 26 in Islamabad.

MOCC Forest Wing Inspector General Mehmood Nasir accompanied the UNDP consultants to Abbottabad and Ghora Gali last week to ensure that the viewpoint of the forest departments of the K-P and the Punjab as well as the private forest owners could be fully incorporated in the upcoming GEF project on SFM.

“The GEF project will be the first of its kind as before not a single penny was invested in guzara or private forests,” Guzara Forest Owners Association Hazara Division Chairman Shahzada Gustasib said.

“The British rulers’ created a delicate balance in forest governance backed up with law and merit-based decision making without political influence and established the Indian Forest Services,” Nasir told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2015.