Observer Report
Islamabad
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Climate Change, Malik Amin Aslam has said that implementation of the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme across the country is in full swing and all-out efforts are being taken to ensure its effective monitoring, reporting and verification at all levels for attainment of desired outcome of enhanced environmental development and climate change resilience of the country.
Addressing the participants of the high-level event ‘Third Party Monitoring of Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme’, as a chief guest here on Monday, he said that in management projects and programmes, information regarding its transparent implementation is not always readily accessible to everyone and is on a need-to-know basis for some.
Malik Amin said that the project or programme directors, managers and relevant key stakeholders are the ones with access to all the information.
This lack of transparency can lead to public distrust and resentment and hamper publicity of the programme and project activities, he added.
He said, “We hope that independent and impartial monitoring and evaluation by third party of the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami, would help systematically measure and assess programme activities across the country through various internationally-used tools and techniques and provide support to establish and maintain public trust about the activities.”
Meanwhile, recalling the pressing reasons behind success story of the Billion Tree Tsunami Programme (BTTP), upon philosophy of which the TBTTP is built, the Special Assistant to PM on Climate Chage said that tackling challenges of timber mafia, enhanced community participation, sustained focus on both regeneration of new forests and reinvigorating the existing forests and lastly the enhanced transparency through the third party monitoring and evaluation of the BTTP’s activities across the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province were the key driving forces behind the successfulness of the afforestation project.
