‘Green gold’ spreads fast in Pakistan

Program acts as safeguard against erosion, helps tackle climate change

HEROSHAH, Pakistan — The change is drastic: Around the region of Heroshah, previously arid hills are now covered with forest as far as the eye can see. In northwestern Pakistan, hundreds of millions of trees have been planted to fight deforestation.

In 2015 and 2016, around 16,000 workers planted more than 900,000 fast-growing eucalyptus trees at regular, geometric intervals in Heroshah — and the titanic task is just a fraction of the effort across the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“Before it was completely burned land. Now they have green gold in their hands,” said forest manager Pervaiz Manan as he displayed pictures of the site previously, when only sparse blades of tall grass interrupted the monotonous landscape.

The new trees will reinvigorate the area’s scenic beauty, act as a control against erosion, help tackle climate change, decrease the chances of flooding and increase the chances of precipitation, said Manan, who oversaw the revegetation of Heroshah.

Residents also see them as an economic boost — which, officials hope, will deter them from cutting the new growth down to use as firewood in a region where electricity can be sparse.

“Now our hills are useful, our fields became useful,” said driver Ajbir Shah. “It is a huge benefit for us.”

Further north, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Swat, many of the high valleys were denuded. Now they are covered in pine saplings.

“You can’t walk without stepping on a seedling,” said Yusufa Khan, another forest department worker.

The Heroshah and Swat plantations are part of the “Billion Tree Tsunami”, a provincial government program that has seen a total of 300 million trees of 42 different species planted across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

A further 150 million plants were given to landowners, while strict forest regeneration measures have allowed the regrowth of 730 million trees — roughly 1.2 billion new trees in total, the program’s management said.

Now our hills are useful, our fields became useful.

It is a huge benefit for us.”

Ajbir Shah,

Kamran Hussain, a manager of the Pakistani branch of the World Wildlife Fund, which conducted an independent audit of the project, said its figures showed slightly less — but still above target at 1.06 billion trees.

The program has been praised by the head of the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature or IUCN, a green NGO, which called it a “true conservation success story”.

Initially regarded by some critics as unrealistic objectives, it is a welcome change to the situation elsewhere in the country.

Pakistani authorities said just 5.2 percent of the nation is covered by forest, compared to the 12 percent recommended by the United Nations.

Just one big tree remains in the poverty-stricken village of Garhi Bit in the southern province of Sindh, shading its small mosque.

It has stood there for a century, locals say.

“Before, there were big trees, many kinds of them,” said Dad Mohammad, a 43-year-old farmer.

“But they started to dry because of the lack of water, so we cut them,” he said, pointing to hundreds of meters of cultivated land where there previously stood a forest.

The Billion Tree Tsunami, which cost the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government $169 million, started in November 2014. In early 2017, the federal government announced its own Green Pakistan Project, which aims to plant 100 million trees across the nation in five years.