Conservation success story
‘BILLION TREE TSUNAMI’: A TOTAL OF 300 MILLION TREES OF 42 DIFFERENT SPECIES PLANTED
Initially mocked, it is a welcome change to the situation elsewhere in Pakistan.
Heroshah
The change is drastic: around the region of Heroshah, previously arid hills are now covered with forest as far as the horizon. In northwestern Pakistan, hundreds of millions of trees have been planted to fight deforestation.
In 2015 and 2016 about 16 000 labourers 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 burnt land. Now, they have green gold in their hands,” said forest manager Pervaiz Manan as he displays 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 mitigate climate change, decrease the chances of floods and increase the chances of precipitation, says 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 are useful,” says driver Ajbir Shah. “It is a huge benefit for us.”
Further north, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Swat, many of the high valleys were denuded by the Pakistani Taliban during their reign from 2006 to 2009. Now, they are covered in pine saplings.
“You can’t walk without stepping on a seedling,” Yusufa Khan, another forest department worker, says with a smile.
The Heroshah and Swat plantations are part of the Billion Tree Tsunami, a provincial government programme 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 – about 1.2 billion new trees in total, the programme’s management says.
Kamran Hussain, manager of the Pakistani branch of the World Wildlife Fund, who conducted an independent audit of the project, says their figures showed slightly less – but still above target at 1.06 billion trees.
“We are 100% confident that the figure about the billion trees is correct,” he said, highlighting the transparency of the process. ”
The programme has been praised by the head of the Swissbased International Union for Conservation of Nature, a green nongovernmental organisation, which called it a “true conservation success story”.
Initially mocked for what critics said were unrealistic objectives, it is a welcome change to the situation elsewhere in the country. Pakistani authorities say just 5.2% of the country is covered by forest, against the 12% recommended by the United Nations.
Just one big tree remains in the poverty-stricken village of Garhi Bit in the southern province of Sindh.
The Billion Tree Tsunami, which cost the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government $169 million, started in November 2014. Officials say they are still implementing maintenance safeguards such as fire protection, with the project due to be completed in June 2020. – AFP