The PTI-led government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is going to launch a five-year afforestation programme in the last week of February.
The forest area in KP would be enhanced from 20 percent to 22 percent by 2018, which would entail converting, at least, 30,000 hectares of additional land every year into forests through massive afforestation drive.
This was said by PTI Central Vice President Malik Amin Aslam while outlining salient features of the Billion Tree Tsunami campaign at a function held with PTI Chairman Imran Khan in the chair.
Aslam said that this initiative would focus on certain important sectors and would be led by quantifiable and measurable five-year targets that the KP government was committing to achieve. A “youth nurseries” programme to create decent and green jobs for the youth of KP would complement this.
The five sectors in Green KP included forestry, protected area, national parks, clean energy, climate Resilience, water, sanitation and waste Management. In addition, through enrichment planting, the tree cover in existing forests would be increased from 20-30 percent by 2018 and this would entail gap plantations in, at least, 27000 hectares each year.
Under this mechanism private sector entities would be invited, in an open and transparent process, to invest in KP forests and become partners in its preservation. The Government of KP would place a complete ban on cutting and felling of trees in the reserved forests of the province by converting, in a phased manner, all these state-owned forests into national parks.
Through these revolutionary measures, the KP government will not only commit to reverse the high rate of deforestation but also shift the current philosophy of treating forests as a “revenue” machine towards preserving them as a valued “natural capital”.
