Geospatial platform on cards to monitor afforestation programme

ISLAMABAD: Efforts are underway to launch a geospatial platform for monitoring the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami afforestation programme and ecosystem restoration efforts, said special assistant to the prime minister on climate change Malik Amin Aslam on Tuesday.

He was addressing a two-day national workshop on the topic jointly organised by the climate change ministry and Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

The organisers said the event was meant to initiate groundwork for establishing a satellite remote sensing-backed geospatial platform to support ecosystem restoration efforts under the TBTTP and to initiate work on a five-yearly State of The Forest Report for Pakistan.

Speaking as the chief guest at the event, Malik Amin said Pakistan’s forest restoration journey started in 2014 with the investment in planting trees in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The programme achieved the target of one billion trees in 2018. “After forming the government at the federal level, we [PTI] started the TBTTP,” he said.

The SAPM said the TBTTP was a nationwide initiative and had helped restore over one million hectares of degraded land across Pakistan so far.

He added that the World Economic Forum, the United Nations Development Programme and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization had recognised the programme as the best replicable climate change mitigation and adaptation initiative.

“Most recently, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) termed Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Plantation (TBTTP) vision as a “Global Leader” initiative,” he said.