Billion Tree Tsunami | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Commercial? | No |
Type of project | Afforestation |
Location | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan |
Ministry | Ministry of Climate Change |
Key people | Imran Khan, Malik Amin Aslam, |
Established | 2014 |
Launched | 2 September 2018 |
Budget | Rs. 109.38 billion (US$380 million) |
Website | mocc.gov.pk |
The Billion Tree Tsunami was a tree plantation drive launched in 2014, by the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, in response to the challenge of global warming. Pakistan's Billion Tree Tsunami restores 350,000 hectares of forests and degraded land to surpass its Bonn Challenge commitment. [1] [2] The project aimed at improving the ecosystems of classified forests, as well as privately owned waste and farm lands, and therefore entails working in close collaboration with concerned communities and stakeholders to ensure their meaningful participation through effectuating project promotion and extension services. [3] The project was completed in August 2017, ahead of schedule.
The Billion Tree Tsunami Project is driven by the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s vision of green growth which ties in the needs for sustainable forestry development, generating green jobs, gender empowerment, preserving Pakistan’s natural capital while also addressing the global issue of climate change. [4]
The Billion Tree Tsunami covers the whole province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Region | Division |
---|---|
Central-Southern Forest Region-I Peshawar | |
Northern Forest Region-II Abbottabad | |
Northern Forest Region-III Malakand |
On 3 September 2018, after becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan following the 2018 Pakistani general election, Imran Khan launched a 5-year, country-wide 10 billion tree plantation drive from Makhniyal, KPK to combat the effects of global warming. Its total cost is estimated at 125.1843 billion Pakistani rupees. [5]
In January 2020, the National Accountability Bureau started an inquiry on alleged loss of 462 million rupees [6] (approximately $3 million USD) in connection with an inquiry it had launched in March 2018. [7] Allegations included ghost labour, embezzlement, and misappropriation. The Bureau recommended an enhancement of the inquiry to establish whether further losses have occurred. [8] In 2016 the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) had published a third party audit report for all the project's phases. [9] [10]
The billion tree program was appreciated by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), according to their statement “We are at a point in history where we need to act and Pakistan is leading on this important effort.” [11] [12] World Economic Forum praised adding 350,000 hectares of trees. Furthermore, congratulated Pakistan for reaching target of billion trees ahead of schedule. [13] Pakistan exceeded its Bonn challenge commitment, [14] Khyber Pakhtunkhwa a province in Pakistan became the first international entity to complete the challenge, [15] on success of Bonn challenge Head of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s Inger Anderson dubbed the project as “a true conservation success story”. [13] Based on international appreciation Saudi Arabia contacted government of Pakistan to plants 10 billion trees in their country. [16]
Reforestation is the natural or intentional restocking of existing forests and woodlands (forestation) that have been depleted, usually through deforestation but also after clearcutting. Two important purposes of reforestation programs are for harvesting of wood or for climate change mitigation purposes.
Havelian is the second largest municipality in the Abbottabad District, in the Hazara Division, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It serves as the headquarters for Havelian Tehsil. The word literally translates into English as "mansions". The outskirts of the city are also home to one of the largest ordnance factories of Pakistan, Pakistan Ordnance Factories Havelian. An ordnance depot also exists in the vicinity of the city and the factory.
Afforestation is the establishment of a forest or stand of trees (forestation) in an area where there was no recent tree cover. In comparison, reforestation means re-establishing forest that have either been cut down or lost due to natural causes, such as fire, storm, etc. There are three types of afforestation: natural regeneration, agroforestry and commercial plantations. There are several benefits from afforestation such as carbon sequestration, increasing rainfall, prevention of topsoil erosion, flood and landslide mitigation, barriers against high winds, shelter for wildlife, employment and alternative sources of wood products.
Margalla Hills National Park is a national park in Pakistan located in Islamabad Capital Territory, near its northern boundary with Haripur District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The park includes the Margalla Hills, which form the foothills of the Himalayas, along with Shakarparian Park and Rawal Lake.
The Margalla Hills are a hill range within the Margalla Hills National Park on the northern edge of Islamabad Capital Territory, Pakistan, just south of Haripur District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They are part of the Himalayan foothills. The Margalla range has an area of 12,605 hectares. It is a range with many valleys as well as high mountains.
Environmental issues in Pakistan include air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, climate change, pesticide misuse, soil erosion, natural disasters, desertification and flooding. According to the 2020 edition of the environmental performance index (EPI) ranking released by Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, Pakistan ranks 142 with an EPI score of 33.1, an increase of 6.1 over a 10-year period. It ranked 180 in terms of air quality. The climatic changes and global warming are the most alarming issues risking millions of lives across the country. The major reasons of these environmental issues are carbon emissions, population explosion, and deforestation.
Hayat Mohammad Khan Sherpao, simply known as Hayat Sherpao, was a left-wing intellectual and socialist, serving as the 15th Governor of North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, as well as vice-chairman of Pakistan People's Party. Sherpao held important executive offices, including served as the Interior minister and had held a number of provincial ministries of the North West Frontier Province. He was assassinated in 1975, and his death was blamed on a rival political party in the province - the Awami National Party of Khan Abdul Wali Khan.
The Changa Manga is a planted forest which includes a wildlife preserve, in the Kasur and Lahore districts of Punjab, Pakistan. It is located approximately 80 kilometers south-west of Lahore. It was once the largest man-made forest in the world but has undergone illegal deforestation at a massive scale in recent times.
The Frontier Corps, are a group of paramilitary forces of Pakistan, operating in the provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to maintain law and order while overseeing the country's borders with Afghanistan and Iran. There are four Frontier Corps: FC KPK (North) and FC KPK (South) stationed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and FC Balochistan (North) and FC Balochistan (South) stationed in Balochistan province.
The Trillion Tree Campaign is a project which aims to plant one trillion trees worldwide. It seeks to repopulate the world's trees and combat climate change as a nature-based solution. The project was launched at PlantAhead 2018 in Monaco by Plant-for-the-Planet. In the fall of 2018, the project's official website was published in order to register, monitor, and donate trees to reforestation projects around the world. The campaign is a continuation of the activities of the earlier Billion Tree Campaign, instigated by Wangari Maathai, who founded the Green Belt Movement in Africa in 1977.
The forestry sector of Pakistan is a main source of lumber, paper, fuelwood, latex, medicine as well as food and provide ecotourism and wildlife conservation purposes. 4.91% of Pakistan's land is covered in forest. The Shangla district is the only district of Pakistan that composed of more than 80% of forest land.
Pervez Khan Khattak is a Pakistani politician who served as the Minister of Defence from August 2018 until April 2022. He had been a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from August 2018 till January 2023. Prior to that, he served as the 22nd Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from 2013 to 2018, elected to the Provincial Assembly from Nowshera District. He was a senior member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf until July 2023, when he formed his breakaway faction, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Parliamentarians.
Pervez Khattak administration was the coalition of provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa between Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Qaumi Watan Party (QWP), and Awami Jamhuri Ittehad Pakistan (AJIP). AJIP later merged itself with PTI.
Malik Amin Aslam is a Pakistani environmentalist and politician who served as Federal Minister and Adviser to former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan for Climate Change. He also serves as Vice President in IUCN.
The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of the world's degraded and deforested lands by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. It was hosted and launched by Germany and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Bonn on 2 September 2011, in collaboration with the Global Partnership on Forest/Landscape Restoration and targets delivery on the Rio Conventions and other outcomes of the 1992 Earth Summit. As at 2013 over 20 million hectares of land had been pledged for restoration from countries including Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Rwanda, and the United States. South Korea, Costa Rica, Pakistan, China, Rwanda and Brazil have embarked on successful landscape restoration programmes.
Conservation in Pakistan is the act of preserving, guarding, or protecting, biodiversity, environment, and natural resources of Pakistan.
TransPeshawar or Zu Peshawar is a bus rapid transit system in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. TransPeshawar BRT system consists of two parts: the first encompasses an east–west corridor served by 32 stations on a dedicated lane for exclusive use by buses, while the second part consists of a network of feeder routes in which buses can enter and exit the system to travel on city streets. The system was inaugurated on August 13, 2020, and is the fourth BRT system in Pakistan.
Plant for Pakistan (Plant4Pakistan), also known as 10 Billion Tree Tsunami, is a five-year project to plant 10 billion trees across Pakistan from 2018 to 2023. Prime Minister Imran Khan started the drive on 2 September 2018 with approximately 1.5 million trees planted on the first day. The campaign was based on the successful Billion Tree Tsunami campaign of the former Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government, also led by Imran Khan, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2014. This different initiative is often confused with the initiative of the Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif who launched a national campaign of Green Pakistan and also allocated budget funding from the PSDP.
Makhniyal is a village located in the Haripur District of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. It is situated about 15 kilometers southeast of the city of Haripur, and is part of the Khanpur union council. It is located about 30 kilometers from Islamabad.
The National Tree Plantation Day is an Arbor Day celebrated on 18 August every year. The inception of this occasion stems from Pakistan's achievement of a notable feat on 15 July 2009, whereby 300 volunteers effectively planted 541,176 youthful mangrove saplings within a single day, all achieved without the utilization of mechanical machinery. This remarkable endeavor was undertaken as part of Pakistan's commitment to the Billion Tree Campaign established by the United Nations Environment Program, with the country pledging to plant a total of 120 million trees.