Pakistan's Largest Afforestation Program – Promoting Green, Resilient, Inclusive Recovery
To move ahead along with international environmental agenda and contributing to the Bonn challenge pledges, the government of Pakistan has started a major initiative of “The Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Program (TBTTP)” now called Upscaling Green Pakistan Program (UGPP) to plant and protect 10 billion trees all over the country. TBTTP/GPP is implemented apart from the effective strategy to promote green, resilient, and inclusive recovery, the program include creating green jobs, planting of 10 per cent fruit trees to promote eco-tourism, conserve and develop forests, increase income of local people from the sale of forest products, enhance the productivity of rangelands and pastures, enhance protective functions of watersheds for regulating their water regime, promote local flora and fauna and manage national wildlife parks, sanctuaries and national biosphere reserves. The initiative of TBTTP has so far received wide national and international recognition.
- During implementation of Billion Tree Afforestation Project in KP-Pakistan, half a million green jobs were created to engage youth, women and poor segment of the society by engaging them in forest regeneration protection, forest fire management, forest trees protection and raising of forest saplings.
- During implementation of TBTTP, 85,000 COVID safe jobs were created during the pandemic to contribute to the local economy.
- In addition to the jobs created during COVID, the program created 879,000 more green jobs including 8,823 women specific jobs - combating the economic vulnerabilities of local people on one hand and boosting conservation of nature on the other.
- Twice in a year at the start of spring and monsoon seasons, plant for Pakistan day is celebrated at national, provincial and district levels to kick start plantations. The high dignitaries, including Prime Minister Pakistan, Provincial Chief Ministers, federal and provincial ministers, Bureaucracy, armed forces, Civil Society Organizations, Judiciary, academia, students, government line departments and local communities participate in these events. The number of participants in these events is in millions.
Significant learnings of the program include the following:
- Assisted Natural Regeneration technique for forests restoration is key to success for any mega afforestation program, with standardization criteria for selection of degraded areas having at least 30% seed bearing mother trees.
- Planting native fruit & forest trees can better support the holistic approach of forest & biodiversity conservation.
- Women and youth engagement in afforestation programs can help in meeting the requirements of huge work force.
Status of project achievements (July 2019 - June 2024)
|
Province / Territory |
Physical Targets |
Achievements (plants in million number) |
% of achievements |
|
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa |
1000 |
689.74 |
69 |
|
Punjab |
466 |
328.00 |
70 |
|
Sindh |
1000 |
764.40 |
76 |
|
Balochistan |
100 |
15.10 |
15 |
|
Azad Jammu & Kashmir |
560 |
163.59 |
29 |
|
Gilgit Baltistan |
170 |
51.40 |
30 |
|
Total |
3296 |
2012.23 |
61 |
An ambitious mega afforestation program by the Government reflects a political will to increase forest cover of Pakistan which will result in improvement of environmental conditions for our future generations. To make the program delivery transparent, the government has involved the international environmental agencies to constitute a consortium and undertake third party monitoring of TBTTP. For this purpose, the Ministry of Climate Change requested the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ϲʿֱֳ) to lead the consortium of ϲʿֱֳ, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World-Wide Fund (WWF-Pakistan) for independent third-party monitoring and evaluation of TBTTP from 2020 to 2025 in Pakistan.
Apart from the monitoring and evaluation of the program, the consortium is also conducting some of the special studies on impacts of the program, which include, Assessment of Mangroves Rehabilitation in Pakistan, Vegetation Change detection occurred due to the program, Level of community participation in the program, impacts of the program on over all biodiversity conservation, develop guidelines for tree plantation program.
The Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme comprises of tree plantations/ assisted natural regeneration and support implementation of targets 15.1, 15.2, 15.5 and 15.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Photo: ϲʿֱֳ Pakistan
