Islamabad
Reforesting Pakistan: Prime Minister Imran Khan has launched a tree-planting campaign across Pakistan called the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami. The initiative builds on a program Khan launched two years ago in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province— controlled by his party since 2013—which involved the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees and a crackdown on timber smuggling. Decades of illegal logging and unregulated development have destroyed Pakistan’s forest cover. Malik Amin Aslam, the federal minister for climate change, said Pakistanis are now learning to protect their trees. Still, “there will be a lot of blowback,” he said. “About 40 percent of fertile public land has been encroached by land-grabbers, including some lawmakers.”