Messofanego said:

This seems more like a unanimous Pakistani thing, rather than some provinces believing in climate change and some being against.

It's Pakistan's top concern, along with 19 other countries where the majority of the population consider climate change a global threat. Climate change is USA's second least top concern.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/07/14/climate-change-seen-as-top-global-threat/

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ShadowSwordmaster said:

We are actually. It might not be as big as planting this many trees.

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Poetic.Injustice said:

I've read that logging companies are required to replant any time they saw for lumber.

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Poetic.Injustice said:

I've read that logging companies are required to replant any time they saw for lumber.

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DrSlek said:

A fucking billion??

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Marvie_3 said:

Now lets plant billions and billions more.

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SolarPowered said:

Sorta related, but here is a set of answers for a 2016 Democratic primary question asking what the greatest national security threat to the United States is. Obviously this was the only group of politicians we could count on at the time since no one in their right mind should expect anything from Republicans on climate change. Considering the results of the presidential election and the answers to this particular question all I have to say is... we REALLY know how to pick 'em.

:/

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vikki said:

Be nice if we could do this in the US, but wildfire is a real threat out west. Could we do this in the US? Would planting so many trees help prevent drought?

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danthefan said:

There are thought to be about three trillion trees on the Earth. Well that was as of a year or two ago.

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Drenched in sweat, 35-year-old Ahmad Khan fetches water for plants in buckets from a small pool nearby. Sounds easy, but accomplishing this horrendous task under the sizzling sun which usually shoots up mercury to 40 degrees Celsius is quite the opposite.

“We water plants after every 10 days or on the day when the temperature is high,” he said while fetching water for plants.

Garhi Chandan area was a barren terrain situated at a distance of around 25 kilometres from Peshawar. The region bordering tribal areas of FR Peshawar was once a bastion of miscreants and had been declared a red zone.

Locals used to witness criminal and terror activities on a regular basis, but were not able to control it. One of the locals, who requested not to be named, told The Express Tribune that high-profile terrorists residing in Garhi Chandan used to plan terror activities and even slaughtered people.

“Now that the region has been nearly cleansed of terrorists and one million saplings have been planted under the Billion Tree Tsunami Forestation project, the land has become of immense importance not only for the local population, but also for the entire world,” he added.

Much has been reported in the media, which is confined only to documents and interviews. The most recent report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) praised the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government for surpassing the Bonn Challenge of reclaiming more than 348,000 hectares of barren and degraded land.

A team of The Express Tribune visited the site to witness the saplings being planted in the region to check if the claims of the K-P government were true.

Entering the plantation range spread over 800 hectares or 16,000 kanals, a nursery has been set up where more than 800,000 seeds have been sown, which will have to be shifted to the plantation region to cross the target of one billion.

The IUCN report claims that more than 13,000 private tree nurseries have been established under the project across the province which has already boosted local income, generated thousands of green jobs and empowered unemployed youth as well as women in the province.

Having hilly terrains on both sides, the unpaved road that enters into the site was entirely barren before the forestation. “There wasn’t any plant in the land except for those that had grown naturally,” Muhammad Saleem, a local resident, told The Express Tribune.

The villages are far away from the plantation site since the land was barren and owned collectively by the people of the village.

Saleem said now since the plants have grown, the villagers are taking keen interest in protecting them.

The project has been executed in all the K-P districts on divisional basis. The team has checked Garhi Chandan, which is the major site of Peshawar division. The saplings consist of species of shesham, polai, chirpine, kikar, zizyphus, sanata, willow, poplar, amaltas, cypress, Eucalyptus and bakain and are planted 10 feet away from each other in squares.

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“More than 4.5 million saplings have been planted in Peshawar division consisting of regions of Army Range-1 and 2, Mistri Banda, Manki Sharif, Bela Mohmandan, Azakhel, Katozai, Kheshgi, Torlandi areas of Nowshera, Charsadda, and Peshawar with reclamation of over 4,000 hectares of land,” said Shafqat Munir, Forest Department Chief Conservator Central and Southern region of the project.

Munir told The Express Tribune that the government had estimated to spend a total of Rs22 billion on the project when it was launched in January 2015. “Till now, over Rs10.5 billion has been utilised and it is expected that the target of one billion trees will be completed at a total cost of Rs14 billion.”

Eighty per cent of the funds, Munir said, have been utilised to employ, on temporary basis, some 500,000 people living below the poverty line for the project. He said the government would complete the target of one billion trees by August 31 and an event would be arranged in Islamabad to celebrate the achievement.

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Currently, 22% of the land is covered by forests, while after the completion of the project over 25% of the land of the province will be covered by trees.

About the Bonn Challenge – forestation on 348,000 hectares of land – Munir said “We have planted trees over 618,000 hectares, which is double the challenge.”

He said to achieve the target of one billion trees, 40% were regenerated naturally, 20% through farm forestry and 40% through plantations. “The 40% regeneration also occurs owing to plantation activities in the vicinity of the land,” he added.

When asked about criticism by some ecologists on planting Eucalyptus, Munir said some experts and international organisations were indulged in illogical arguments that this species of plants harmed the water table of the ground.

He said less than 10% of the total saplings are Eucalyptus planted under the project, which give oxygen, take carbon and provide timber like the rest of the plants. “I wonder why this plant is the hated one among the ecologists across the globe.”

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