PM opens world’s biggest Miyawaki forest

LAHORE: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday, highlighting the importance of forests in checking global warming and pollution, urged the masses, especially youth, to plant at least one tree each to ensure a clean Pakistan for the future generations.

He expressed these views while inaugurating the world’s biggest Miyawaki urban forest, as part of monsoon drive under the 10-Billion Tree Tsunami project. The prime minister hoped that the development of Miyawaki forest in the provincial capital would help revive the past glory of Lahore, which used to be a city of gardens with trees planted all around, and now was considered as one of the most polluted cities of the country.

Imran Khan dedicated the Miyawaki forest Lahore to Prof Dr Akira Miyawaki, a Japanese botanist and expert in plant ecology, who died on July 16, 2021. He said that contrary to the only 640 million trees planted in thecountry’s history by 2013, the government of Pakistan

Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa planted one billion trees in the province during 2013 to 2018. He said that now the government’s target was to plant 10 billion trees across the country.

The premier said as the world was faced with the issue of global warming due to various reasons, including deforestation, and Pakistan was doing what it can to check the phenomenon through multiple measures, adding that there was a need to take measures at global level.

The prime minister lauded the efforts of Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar and his team for developing Miyawaki forests in Lahore. On this occasion, he was apprised that Miyawaki forest had been developed over 100 kanals with a total of over 160,000 plants which grow ten times quicker than a normal forest owing to the unique Miyawaki technique.

It uses specialised land preparation as well as indigenous varieties with varying growth rates to produce fast-growing urban forests. The prime minister was further apprised that another 53 Miyawaki forests were being grown at different parts of Lahore to create sinks for carbon as well as for better pollution abatement in the city.

All have been geo-tagged for monitoring of their growth and development. About 500 million trees were being planted across the country under the ongoing monsoon plantation drive which was the largest ever such drive in Pakistan.