One of the top performing ministries with a satisfaction rating of 57 percent according to a recent review of the Pakistan Citizen Portal, is the Ministry of Climate Change, headed by the Advisor to the PM on Climate Change (now the Special Assistant to the PM) Malik Amin Aslam.

Considered the architect of the earlier Billion Tree Tsunami (completed in KP from 2013-2018) Aslam holds an MSc in Environmental Management from University of Oxford. Recently, his ministry announced that in the two years since the PTI government came to power, they have met the Sustainable Development Goal 13, the UN’s climate action goal, ten years ahead of the deadline of 2030.

This claim has been backed up by the UN’s Sustainable Development Report 2020, which was released last month. “Yes that is good news that came up recently for Pakistan… The real culprits behind climate change are in the energy sector and forestry sector. If you look at both sectors – if you are cutting down trees, you are adding to climate change and if you are spewing out carbon, then you are adding to emissions. All the actions you can take to counter this add up to the SDG 13” Aslam told a recent online dialogue organised last week by the 17^th ThinkFest session on tackling climate change in Pakistan.

“On the forestry side, we had the Billion Tree Tsunami which increased the forest cover in KP by 6 percent, a globally acclaimed figure, it forested 600,000 hectares in KP… and now we are emulating that all over Pakistan under the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami project which has 7 plans for all the provinces and territories, going from the mangroves to the natural forests and the plantation forests. All of them are being enhanced and that adds to climate action because forests sequester carbon from the air”.

He said on the energy side too, which is not handled directly by his ministry, Pakistan had made shifts to cleaner energy with its newly passed Alternative and Renewable Energy Policy. This will boost the share of Pakistan’s electric power that comes from renewables to 30 percent by 2030, up from about 4 percent today. The new policy will see a 20 percent share of renewables in installed capacity of Pakistan’s power mix by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030. That will include mainly wind and solar power, but also geothermal, tidal, wave and biomass energy.

With boosts in hydropower capacity expected as well, the shift could bring the share of clean energy in Pakistan’s electricity mix to 65 percent by 2030 according to Nadeem Babar, who headed the PM’s task force on energy reforms.

According to Aslam, “We have signed up on 1,200 MW of stuck up wind projects three or four months back and we have removed the criminal cap on renewable energy put up by the previous government; no province could put up more than 50 MW of renewable energy onto the grid. That was a criminal thing to do with solar exploding. The new policy is in place now and setting the right direction”. He said under the CPEC, imported coal power plants of 2,600 MW (to be set up in Muzaffargarh and Rahim Yar Khan) have been shelved by this government and replaced by 3,700 MW of hydro projects in the north of the country. This has been a big shift in terms of reducing carbon emissions.

Since transport is a big culprit when it comes to emissions, the government has recently approved an ambitious Electric Vehicle Policy, targeting a 30 percent shift to electric cars by 2030. For now, the policy focuses on electric motorbikes, rickshaws, trucks and buses; a policy for cars will be introduced in a month or so.

“During the pandemic we found that just getting transport off the roads cleaned up our air – it showed us that if it needs to be done it can be done and leads to better air quality especially in urban areas” said Malik Amin.

Recently, Pakistan has also shifted to Euro 5 fuel standard. The cleaner fuel is now available at petrol stations. He said that “reduces vehicle emissions by a factor of 10”. These steps have allowed Pakistan to achieve SDG 13 early.

The government also intends to designate a number of new ‘protected areas’ and adopt measures to manage them in partnership with the local communities. They intend to increase the number of officially designated ‘national parks’, covering a land area of over 7,300 square kilometres, from the mountains in the north to the scrub forests in the centre to the coastline in the south. Out of these, nine are new and recently declared national parks while six others were notified earlier, but never protected. They intend to establish a National Park Service, which will create 5,000 direct nature jobs for the youth to be trained guardians and custodians of these parks.

The government has also launched a “transparent and comprehensive” financial mechanism in Pakistan, called the Eco-System Restoration Fund (ESRF), to finance green projects and programmes. Then there is the Recharge Pakistan Initiative, which will look at restoring wetlands along the Indus River System to divert floodwater and recharge our groundwater. Finally, there is the Karachi Zero-Emission Metro Bus Project, which will become the world’s first bio-methane hybrid bus fleet.

Since the pandemic the PTI government has also introduced “Green Stimulus” packages, which provide livelihood opportunities for daily-wagers in forestry and waste management.

The PTI government says they have secured funds for their flagship 10 Billion Tree initiative, which will create 200,000 new green jobs. “The benefits of planting trees have gone far beyond what was expected… the change in attitude towards forests and environment which started in KP has become a national campaign now,” says Rab Nawaz, a senior director (programmes) at WWF-Pakistan. “People realise that if you plant a tree, you plant hope”.

The writer is an award-winning environmental journalist