Islamabad:Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam has said the effective monitoring of forests is imperative for containing deforestation and forestland degradation and taming global warming-caused climate change.
"There has been large-scale deforestation and land degradation in the country over last several years for want of effective forest monitoring system, which helps detect logging operations in forest areas and natural habitats of outstanding significance or critical importance, in a matter of minutes," he told the launching ceremony of the National Forest Monitoring System here on Monday.
The premier's aide, however, said the forest monitoring system would prove a great help for the country regarding conservation, sustainable management of forests, enhancement of forest carbon stocks and monitor changes in the forest land use and detect deforestation land degradation activities.
He said Pakistan lost forests over 27,000 hectares annually, causing massive environmental degradation and contamination of air quality and various serious public health hazards.
The event was organised by the Ministry of Climate Change in support with the World Bank-supported $7.81 million dollar Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) Readiness Project. The United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (or UN-REDD+ Programme) is a collaborative programme of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), created in 2008 in response to the UNFCCC decisions on the Bali Action Plan and REDD at the United Nations’ 13th Session on Climate Change.
Malik Amin told participants that while the heightened importance had been assigned by the government to boosting forest cover and taming deforestation and land degradation in the country, a first-ever national forest monitoring system launched here as part of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s vision for clean and green Pakistan to check unlawful deforestation and forest land degradation activities across the country for environmental sustainability and national climate action.
Spelling out goals of the development of robust national forest monitoring system, he said its overarching goal was the establishment of a reliable forest resource information system for application in creating national forest policies, planning and sustainable development.
"The monitoring system would be based on measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) functions, deployment of which would help produce high-quality, reliable data on forests, including forest-carbon estimates, that are critical to the battle against climate change caused by among others deforestation and degradation of forests," he said.
The prime minister’s aide said the monitoring, reporting and verification of forest resources would employ satellite land monitoring systems (SLMS) and other data collection providing information for activity data (AD), National Forest Inventories (NFI) or other data collection providing information on emission factors (EF).
He said the forest monitoring system would also identify and collect activity data for their relevant land use and its change (LULUC), forestry and REDD+ activities. For instance, spatial data on deforestation and afforestation/reforestation to be collected through satellite data, Malik Amin added.
According to him, Pakistan is party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which had recognized deforestation as one of the main source of emissions of carbon resulting in global warming.
However, stemming deforestation and forest land degradation have been globally recognized as the best way to slow down global warming-induced climate crisis and achieve environmental sustainability goals.
Earlier, briefing about the World Bank-funded REDD+ Readiness Preparation Project, Climate Change Ministry Secretary Naheed Shah Durrani said the initiative had been a great help and support for implementation of the country’s first national forest monitoring system.
She said the system also involves a national monitoring web portal with dedicated server hosted at GCISC with supported geodatabase of forestry sector. The secretary urged the provincial forest departments to play their effective role in implementing the national forest system for conserving the fast depleting forest resources of the country as part of global climate action and environmental sustainability.