Prime Minister Imran Khan has lauded his team for successfully carrying out the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami as the UN Environment Programme acknowledged Pakistan’s lead role in ecosystem restoration.
“Proud of my team,” the prime minister said in a tweet, quoting UNEP as saying that “We are at a point in history where we need to act, and Pakistan is leading on this important effort”.
The prime minister also shared an article published on the website of Stockholm+50 – an international meeting convened by the United Nations General Assembly, the preparatory meeting of which was held on March 28 at the UN Headquarters in New York.
The article mentioned Pakistan’s contribution towards the up-gradation of the environment.
“Large scale restoration initiatives such as The Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Project are central to Pakistan’s efforts to support the UN Decade and to increase ecosystem restoration,” said Dechen Tsering, UNEP’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific. “We are at a point in history where we need to act, and Pakistan is leading on this important effort.”The UNEP’s Inclusive Wealth Report for Pakistan, a first-of-its-kind accounting of the country’s natural, human and produced capital, said “it was promising to see the steps that the country’s government is taking to turn things around, particularly with its restoration projects”.
The ambitious project – which aims to revive forest and wildlife resources in Pakistan and bring a host of other benefits – planted 1.42 billion trees between 2019 and December 2021, covering 1.36 million acres across almost 10,000 sites.
According to a UN Development Programme (UNDP) report, Pakistan is particularly susceptible to increased variability of monsoons, receding Himalayan glaciers, and extreme events including floods and droughts. The knock-on effect of these will be an increase in food and water insecurity.
