Satellite Image Shows Pakistan Among World's Fastest Greening Countries

[Riaz Haq]

Satellite images provided by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) show that greenery in Pakistan has been growing at double digit rates over the last few decades. All of this rapid greening of the country is the result of intensive agriculture in Punjab and Sindh provinces.

Greening Trends in Asia. Source: NASA Earth Observatory

“China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9 percent of the planet’s land area covered in vegetation,” said Chi Chen, the lead author of a study he did with Ranga Myneni at Boston University. “That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation.”

The Boston University research team found that "global green leaf area has increased by 5 percent since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25 percent of that gain came in China. Overall, one-third of Earth’s vegetated lands are greening, while 5 percent are growing browner. The study was published on February 11, 2019, in the journal Nature Sustainability", according to NASA Earth Observatory.

Pakistan's arable land grew by about 600,000 hectares between 2014 and 2016, according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  It increased from 36,252,000 hectares to 36,844,000 hectares. However, Pakistan has experienced deforestation in this period.  The area under forests has shrunk from 1,515,000 hectares in 2014 to 1.429,000 hectares in 2016.

Two years ago, Prime Minister Imran Khan, then a politician whose party governed the Khyber PakhtunKhwa (KP) province, launched a program called the “Billion Tree Tsunami”.  Eventually, hundreds of thousands of trees were planted across the region, timber smuggling was virtually wiped out, and a cottage industry of backyard nurseries flourished, according to Washington Post.  Now, the PTI government led by Prime Minister Imran Khan, is aiming to replicate that success nationwide with a “10 Billion Tree Tsunami.”

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[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan’s #Honey Production Up 70% Thanks to #ImranKhan's Billion #trees Project. About 400 tons, about 2% of demand, still imported every year. Tree planting will cut Pak import bill by half in the next 4-5 years. #beekeeping #environment #forests https://propakistani.pk/2020/04/20/pakistans-honey-production-incre...

The production of honey in the country has increased by seventy percent thanks to the plantation of hundreds of thousands of trees under Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Billion Tree project.

The honey production initiative in Changa Manga was started in 2016 when the beehives were auctioned for Rs. 729,000. Now, they cost more than Rs. 1.3 million.

According to the Forest Department’s officials, the complete implementation of the project may increase the amount of auction money from Changa Manga to Rs. 10 million.

Shahid Tabassum, a Forest officer, mentioned that 85 percent of the trees have been planted in the past few years which has led to a remarkable increase in bees.

As for now, there are hundreds of beehives in the Changa Manga forest, he said, highlighting the increase in income from the honey auction.

In the financial year 2016-17, the honey was auctioned for Rs 729,000 and in 2017-18 for Rs1.15 million. Similarly, in 2018-19, the honey was auctioned for Rs 1.252 million, while during the current financial year the auction fetched Rs 1.3 million.

Locals of the forest describe how ruthless deforestation and in the past year and reduction in the green cover reduced the number of beehives quite significantly as honey bees found little to no place to make hives.

Also, the flowers which honey bees use to collect nectar became toxic due to spray of the pesticides, resulting in the deaths of thousands of bees.

This declined the production of natural honey by a significant margin, prompting people to consume processed varieties.

The forest officer informed that there are four types of honey bees currently found in Pakistan; Domna, Pahari, small and European. The first three kinds are local bees while European specie (Apis Mellifera) has been exported from Australia.

The best is the European bee because it produces more honey than others.

Tabassum revealed that a honeybee flies 3.5 million times and travels 50 thousand kilometers to produce half a kilogram of honey.

“Honeybees lay 15,000 eggs a day and 2.5 million in one season. They remember the flower scents while moving around and return with its help after accumulating honey in their stomachs.”

He maintained that about 400 tonnes of honey is imported to Pakistan every year. This is only two percent of the total demand.

Tabassum was hopeful that the tree plantation project will cut Pakistan’s import bill by half in the next four, five years.

[Riaz Haq]

Faced with climate change, Pakistani honey producers search for ‘plan bee’https://www.arabnews.pk/node/1432421/pakistan

Mehmood has tried to take various measures to improve his production. He has moved many of his boxes to Faisalabad to give the bees a more hospitable environment. Indeed, in the winter months that bring with them many new diseases that bees are susceptible to, Mehmood struggles to move his hives to the Punjab province. In summer, he tries to relocate them to places like Swat, Kalam, Chitral and Shandoor. He has also tried to place his beehives in fields of Arugula to help the bees survive the harsh cold and feed their offspring. Finally, he says, he has invested in modern medicine to heal bees hit by cold-related illnesses. But things have still remained tough.
“Previously we were generating honey for six seasons. Now it’s been limited to only two seasons,” said Noor Hasan, 55, who has worked as a bee specialist at the Tarnab Agriculture Research Institute since 1982.
Tarnab Farm in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, is home to Pakistan’s biggest honey market, which exports about 4,000 tons of the commodity, worth nearly Rs 2.8 billion, to Arab countries every year. Berry and Acacia, commonly known as Palosa, are the most popular types of honey available in the market and commonly used by diabetics.
Pakistan used to export around Rs.15 billion worth of honey until 2004, which had sharply reduced to Rs.3 billion currently, according to Gul Badshah, senior vice president of the Bee Keepers, Exporters and Traders Honey Association.
At the moment Pakistan is only exporting honey to Gulf countries; European markets will remain at bay until Pakistan starts following international standards in honey production, Dr. Hussain Ali, a senior research scientist at Tarnab Farm, said: “And that can be achieved once we train our beekeepers and take precautionary measures to produce quality honey.”
Ali said Tarnab Farm was conducting research on the behavior, physiology and diseases of bees and how climate change was affecting them. He said deforestation was one of the major causes of reduction of honey in the country.
“That’s why we have lost some flavor of honey recently. Today we are seeing shortage of wild trees due to spraying on the fields, cutting of trees and urbanization. That’s why the business isn’t progressing,” Ali said. 
Honey business owners are optimistic that the government’s Billion Tree Tsunami scheme might help. The reforestation project has added 350,000 hectares of trees both by planting and natural regeneration, in an effort to fight the effects of climate change.
“Apart from the environment, this [reforestation] would be beneficial for the honey production where bees would work in modest temperature and be able to roam around more and more trees,” Mehmood said, adding that another step the government could take to help the honey business was training farmers about climate change and viral diseases prone to bees.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan's #coronavirus-idled workers hired to plant billions of trees across the country to deal with #climatechange threats. Officials say move will create over 60,000 jobs as gov't aims to help those who lost jobs due to #Covid_19 #lockdown. @AJENews https://aje.io/ptgpt

When construction worker Abdul Rahman lost his job to Pakistan's coronavirus lockdown, his choices looked stark - resort to begging on the streets or let his family go hungry.

But the government has now given him a better option: Join tens of thousands of other out-of-work labourers in planting billions of trees across the country to deal with climate change threats.

Since Pakistan locked down on March 23 to try to stem the spread of COVID-19, unemployed day labourers have been given new jobs as "jungle workers", planting saplings as part of the country's 10 Billion Tree Tsunami programme.

Such "green stimulus" efforts are an example of how funds that aim to help families and keep the economy running during pandemic shutdowns could also help nations prepare for the next big threat: climate change.

"Due to coronavirus, all the cities have shut down and there is no work. Most of us daily wagers couldn't earn a living," Rahman, a resident of Rawalpindi district in Punjab province, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

He now makes 500 rupees ($3) a day planting trees - about half of what he might have made on a good day, but enough to get by.

"All of us now have a way of earning daily wages again to feed our families," he said.

The ambitious five-year tree-planting programme, which Prime Minister Imran Khan launched in 2018, aims to counter rising temperatures, flooding, droughts and other extreme weather conditions in the country that scientists link to climate change.

The Global Climate Risk Index 2020, issued by think-tank Germanwatch, ranked Pakistan fifth on a list of countries most affected by planetary heating over the last 20 years - even though the South Asian nation contributes only a fraction of global greenhouse gases.

As the coronavirus pandemic struck Pakistan, the 10 Billion Trees campaign was initially halted as part of social distancing orders put in place to slow the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 14,880 people in Pakistan, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

But earlier this month, the prime minister granted an exemption to allow the forestry agency to restart the programme and create more than 63,600 jobs, according to government officials.

A recent assessment by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics found that, due to the lockdown, up to 19 million people could be laid off, almost 70 perfect of them in the Punjab province.

Abdul Muqeet Khan, chief conservator of forests for Rawalpindi district, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the planting project is in "full swing".

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan's tree-planting push in Changa Manga Forest has a sweetener: more #honey. Globally, there has been a drastic decline in bee numbers, largely due to intensive agriculture, pesticide use and climate change. #treeplanting #environment
https://www.deccanherald.com/science-and-environment/pakistans-tree... @deccanherald

When authorities started planting millions of trees in eastern Pakistan's Changa Manga Forest five years ago, the idea was to bring back life to forest land that had been destroyed by illegal logging, water scarcity and fires. Now that the trees have matured, they are having an even sweeter side-effect - helping to boost the local bee population and honey production in the area. As part of Pakistan's efforts to offset the impacts of climate change by rehabilitating forests, conserving soil and...

[Riaz Haq]

A 10 Billion-Tree Plan Is Restoring #Pakistan’s Lost #Forests. Pakistan is planting #trees that need relatively little water like a fast-growing mahogany commonly known as the neem tree. The tree drive has created thousand of jobs . #climatechange https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-17/a-10-billion-tre...

Pakistan’s arid climate and rocky deserts may seem an unlikely place to look for a green revolution, but the nation of more than 200 million people has begun one of the world’s largest reforestation programs.

The government is in the first phase of planting 3.25 billion trees at an estimated cost of around 105 billion rupees ($650 million), Malik Amin Aslam, minister for climate change said in an interview. Prime Minister Imran Khan wants to extend that to almost 10 billion by the time his term in office ends in 2023.

“We are trying to unleash a green economy,” Aslam said by phone.

The task is enormous. Pakistan is among the six countries that face the biggest impact from climate change, according to the United Nations, with risks of floods, melting glaciers and droughts. Its forest cover is now among the lowest in the world – about 5% of the land, compared with a global average of 31%, according to UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

“Unfortunately, we never cared about them,” said Khan at a tree-planting ceremony in July. “After independence from the British, we have lost forests instead of adding to them.”

Pakistan is planting trees that need relatively little water, like the azadirachta indica, a fast-growing mahogany commonly known as the neem tree. Neems typically don’t need to be watered after the first five years, while the other species that have been chosen only need extra water for the first few months, according to Tabish Hussain, a government-employed forester in Karachi.

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In addition to restoring some eco-systems and absorbing planet-warming carbon emissions, the tree plantation drive has provided thousand of jobs in a country that struggles with unemployment. “I am hopeful that we can save our nation,” said Khan. “You go to Dubai, its all a desert, they don’t have trees. God has given us everything, we just need to take care of it.”

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan emerging as ‘global leader in tackling climate change’ | Pakistan – Gulf News

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/pakistan-emerging-as-globa...


The British government has commended Pakistan’s ambitious 10 billion tree plantation project, describing it as one of the most successful green initiatives that the rest of the world can learn from and implement to tackle climate change.

“Pakistan’s 10 billion tree tsunami project is one of the most ambitious tree planting initiatives in the world and is a successful precedent for others to follow,” said UK Environment Minister, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park. “I absolutely, enthusiastically, commend and celebrate Pakistan’s 10 billion tree tsunami initiative and the tens of thousands of jobs that have been created due to the project. It goes to show what is possible and what can be achieved,” said the UK minister.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan to bring fresh air to cities with 10 billion trees planted using Japanese botanist #Miyawaki's technique. #Lahore urban #forest covers 12.5 acres with over 165,000 plants, expected to grow 10X faster than normal by planting them close together. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-seeks-bring-fre...

As Pakistan continues its massive drive to plant 10 billion trees to reduce smog, the country's prime minister urged his citizens to heed the dire warnings in a U.N. climate change report released on Monday.

Prime Minister Imran Khan made the remarks as he inaugurated what officials say is the largest urban Miyawaki forest project in the world. Using a technique pioneered by the late Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, the forest covers 12.5 acres and has more than 165,000 plants. Officials say the trees are expected to grow 10 times faster than normal due to the Miyawaki technique of planting them close together.

The forest is one of 53 such sites in Lahore that are expected to work as carbon sinks. The city of 10 million has grappled with smog in recent years that has forced schools to close and earned it a ranking among the world's most polluted cities.

"Humans have done such a disservice to God's blessings, to this world, that many things - rising sea levels for instance because of warming and emissions - cannot come back to how they were before," Khan said in the central city of Lahore. "All of us living in the world today, if we do all we can, maybe we can save the world from even worse harm to come."

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said Monday that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Even the starkest measures to reduce emissions, it said, would not prevent a global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and the extreme weather and rising sea levels resulting from that change. read more

Since the tree planting drive started in 2018, the country has 1 billion more trees and is planting another 500 million during the monsoon season.

"If you are concerned about your children and their future, the least you can do is plant one tree and take care of it," Khan said.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan’s 10 billion #trees tsunami across the country. It was started in 2015 by #ImranKhan, now PM. Hundreds of thousands of people across Pakistan are working to nurture and plant 21 species, from the chir pine to the deodar — the national tree. #PTI https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2021/p...

August marks the beginning of monsoon season in Pakistan, and with the rain comes another busy stretch for the country’s ambitious tree-planting program.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, residents of all stripes, from government officials to Boy Scouts, fan out along the hills. They bring with them chinar tree saplings — which can grow to nearly 100 feet tall — along with other varieties, and they begin digging.

It’s all part of an effort that started in 2015, when Imran Khan — then a provincial politician and now Pakistan’s prime minister — backed a program dubbed a “Billion Tree Tsunami.” The initiative reached its provincewide target in 2018 and was so successful that federal officials expanded the drive nationally in 2019 with a new goal of 10 billion trees — or, the “Ten Billion Tree Tsunami.”

“Everyone is waking up and starting to plant,” lawyer and environmentalist Hazrat Maaz told The Washington Post at the time.

The program addresses Pakistan’s history of deforestation as the country confronts the realities of climate change in the form of hotter temperatures, melting Himalayan glaciers and intensifying monsoon rains.

“It makes us very vulnerable,” Malik Amin Aslam, Pakistan’s federal minister for climate change, said in a recent phone call. He has overseen both the provincial and national planting campaigns. “The cheapest, most effective and quickest way to fight climate change is to plant trees,” he said.

Direct planting, Aslam explained, accounts for about 40 percent of the program’s new trees. Hundreds of thousands of people across Pakistan are working to nurture and plant 21 species, from the chir pine to the deodar — the national tree.

The other 60 percent come from assisted regeneration, in which community members are paid to protect existing forests so that trees can propagate and thrive. Protectors are known as “nighabaan,” and 11 individuals lost their lives fighting the “timber mafia” between 2016 and 2018, according to Aslam.

Whether planted or protected, trees capture and hold carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change — and combat erosion on steep landscapes in Pakistan that Aslam says are “almost like living on a slide.”

The latest tree “tsunami” appears to be on pace. The rate of new trees has gone up tenfold since the initiative began, Aslam said. He expects another 500 million trees by the end of this year, with a goal of around 3.2 billion by 2023. If the current ruling party — Movement for Justice — is reelected, the aim is to hit 10 billion trees by 2028.

Aslam says the initiative is engaging the next generation in the country’s battle against climate change.

“Young people get very excited when they hear about this,” he said. “It’s their future that we’re investing in.”

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistanis plant #trees to provide relief from scorching sun. There are neem saplings and vegetables sprouting up from scrubland in the #Clifton district of #Pakistan's largest city #Karachi. #ClimateCrisis #heatwave #floods #fires via @reuterspictures https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/pakistanis-plant-trees-to-prov...

Mulazim Hussain is proud of the trees he has planted.

Surrounded by neem saplings and vegetables sprouting up from scrubland in the Clifton district of Pakistan's largest city Karachi, the 61-year-old recalls a time a few years ago when the area was a giant, informal rubbish tip.

"Now there is greenery and happiness, children come in the evening to play, people come to walk," he said, speaking near a patch of trees amid a barren expanse bordered by the sea on one side and tower blocks and offices in the distance on the other.

"I have raised these plants like my children over the last four years," he added, taking a break from his labours amid a fierce summer heatwave.

Wearing a white and brown scarf around his head and a loose, cream-coloured shirt, Hussain collected dry grass from the ground and watered his cherished trees during a recent visit by Reuters reporters to the urban forest plantation project.

At the end of the day, he turned the hose on himself to cool off and clean up before heading home on his motorcycle.

The father of two is employed by an urban afforestation project in a government-owned park in Karachi's upmarket Clifton area that is run by Shahzad Qureshi, who has worked on similar projects in other Pakistani cities and overseas.

It is one of dozens of state-owned and private planting initiatives in Pakistan, where forest cover lags far behind average levels across South Asia. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, emissions of which contribute to warming global temperatures.

The aim in Clifton is to counterbalance rapid urbanisation in Karachi, a sprawling port city of some 17 million people where breakneck expansion of roads and buildings means there is less and less space for trees and parkland.

Qureshi wanted to provide shade for residents seeking escape from rising temperatures - a heatwave in 2015 killed more than 400 people in the city in three days, and temperatures in the surrounding Sindh region reached record highs this year.

The trees can also attract local wildlife, mitigate urban flooding and provide new sources of food.


"The bigger the tree cover of the city the more the cooling, with a difference of up to 10 (degrees) Celsius when you are surrounded by trees," he told Reuters, adding that the project only used native species.

"As you plant ... it attracts insects, and varieties of birds start coming. Presently mongoose are roaming around in the park, and four or five varieties of chameleon.

"You give them a home, you give them food and let it happen. Nature is so beautiful."

DOES PLANTING HELP?

Overall forest cover in Pakistan, home to more than 220 million people, is around 5.4%, according to Syed Kamran Hussain, manager for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province at the World Wide Fund for Nature's national branch.


That compares with 24% in neighbouring India and 14.5% in Bangladesh, and the previous government announced a mass forestation programme that envisaged planting 10 billion trees between 2019 and 2023.

"Pakistan is among the top 10 most vulnerable countries affected by global warming," Hussain said. "After oceans, trees are the second largest sink of carbon."

Some climate change experts question the impact of afforestation projects - the planting of trees where there were none before - in urban settings.

[Riaz Haq]

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#Pakistanis plant #trees to provide relief from scorching sun. There are neem saplings and vegetables sprouting up from scrubland in the #Clifton district of #Pakistan's largest city #Karachi. #ClimateCrisis #heatwave #floods #fires via @reuterspictures https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/pakistanis-plant-trees-to-prov...


Some climate change experts question the impact of afforestation projects - the planting of trees where there were none before - in urban settings.

The choice of species is important, because it affects the amount saplings may need to be watered - a major factor in Pakistan where water is generally scarce.

And whether to plant trees at all is not a simple question: the benefits are not always clear and significant investment is needed to nurture saplings into fully grown trees.

"What is missing from urban forestry is a holistic approach to the environment," said Usman Ashraf, a doctoral researcher in development studies at the University of Helsinki. He was not commenting specifically on the Karachi project.

"It's about visual success, the numbers, small patches here and there," he said. "It won't even make a dent on any of the environmental harm in these cities."

Masood Lohar, who founded the Clifton Urban Forest that has planted trees on the beach front not far from Qureshi's project, said afforestation could help make Karachi more resilient against natural disasters and encourage wildlife to settle.

Experts say it can also provide relief from heatwaves, with the sea breeze getting hotter as it passes through concrete structures while roadways and rooftops absorb heat. Where to plant is a key question, with wealthier urban areas often better off in terms of tree cover.

In the absence of more trees, "we are turning the city into hell", Lohar said.

In the Sakhi Hassan Graveyard in the centre of the city, small saplings grow among uneven tombstones crammed close together, while larger trees offer shade from the midday sun.

Mohammad Jahangir, 35, is a caretaker there who waters the plants for a small cash donation from relatives who seeded them. Viewed from above, the graveyard is a sea of green that stands out against a low-rise neighbourhood.

"We don't feel the heat here in the graveyard, while the city sizzles," said Jahangir. "These trees are a blessing."

(Photo Editing Gabrielle Fonseca Johnson and Kezia Levitas; Additional Reporting Gloria Dickie in London; Writing Mike Collett-White; Text Editing Alison Williams; Layout Eve Watling)