ISLAMABAD: The Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) bank of Germany has pledged an amount of €13.5 million for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) Billion Tree Tsunami (BTT) project.
“KFW will help in monitoring and capacity building of ground staff as well as communities associated with this project,” a delegation of KFW bank apprised the Adviser to Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam during a meeting, a press release said here on Monday.
The delegation was led by Project Coordination Governance’s Shaukat Ali, including Stephen Gampe and Johannes Dietz. The delegation admired the project and assured to work with the government of Pakistan in its efforts to restore the ecosystem and fight against climate change.
Adviser to the Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam said that the project was not only important for Pakistan but also for the rest of the world and Pakistan was aware of its international obligations regarding climate change.
He further apprised that the KP government’s project had also been selected by the United Nations (UN) among successful projects around the world and would be presented as a model in the upcoming Secretary General’s Summit on Climate Change to be held in September in New York this year.
“Pakistan is also going to set up a fund for ecosystem restoration by seed money of $50 million to open up opportunities for the partners to invest in this fund,” Amin told the delegation. Several countries like Norway and China were keen to invest in this fund. This fund would prove to be a credible and transparent vehicle towards achieving the target of 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Project, he added.
The adviser said that strong political will of the government remained the key to achieve the target of Billion Tree Tsunami project. “Apart from environmental benefits, this project had deep social implication especially regarding women empowerment in the region,” he underscored.
“Many of the nurseries were owned and operated by the women in their backyards and could easily earn 13 to 15 thousands rupees in a month,” he said.
He added that the significant component was creating awareness among the people and communities. “As a result, 600 sawmills have to be shut down, most of them dismantled, due to unavailability of the timber. It has been for the first time in the history of the province that KP had to import timber for domestic use,” the adviser mentioned.
Moreover, he said that 13 guards lost their lives while fighting with timber mafia, adding the most important thing in the project was to create social responsibility and behavioral change.
He also briefed the basic contours and mechanism for the upcoming 10 BTT project. He told the delegation that in the current year Rs16 billion would be spent on BTT project half of which would be provided by the federal government.
“The project will be planned and executed by the provincial governments while the federal government will play a monitoring and supervisory role,” he noted.
The delegation appreciated the efforts of the federal government and assured their support on the behalf of their institution in government’s clean green efforts.