The Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam said that the private sector can play a vital role in restoring the country’s degraded forest landscape to achieve environmental and economic sustainability.
He addressed a press conference for signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for forest restoration and a carbon offset program on Wednesday, and stated that the degradation and loss of forests had already destabilized natural systems on a previously unseen scale. Besides this, the world had already lost nearly half of the six trillion trees that existed before the onset of agriculture 12,000 years ago.
The MoU was signed between the World Wide Fund for Nature – Pakistan (WWF–P), Engro Foundation, and the Ministry of Climate Change, and entails that they will synergize under a joint Forest Restoration Program to restore 50,000 acres of degraded forest lands in various parts of the country, at a cost of Rs. 600 million.
Accordingly, WWF–Pakistan will monitor the afforestation of the 50,000 acres of land.
He highlighted that despite fervent conservation programs launched in different countries, the world has lost around 15 billion more trees each year.
SAPM Amin highlighted that it was heartening to note that non-governmental and non-profit organizations, and some corporate leaders, have long advocated the case for the engagement of the private sector in forest landscape restoration.
There currently appears to be an unprecedented window of opportunity for companies and NGOs to cooperate with governments to advance the world’s goals for protecting the planet, and fighting poverty, hunger, and loss of biodiversity, he said.
Underlining the protection and conservation of forests, the PM’s aide told the media that the cost to business is increasingly evident.
More than half of our annual global GDP, or $44 trillion, is potentially threatened by nature loss because business depends on nature and its services. As trees vanish, the services they offer are naturally weakened, lowering the productivity/health of soils and natural carbon sinks, diminishing the people’s access to clean drinking water, safe sanitation, food, and reducing our resilience to extreme weather events.
The Director-General of WWF-Pakistan, Hammad Naqi Khan, had previously told the media that the restoration of forest landscapes is an important approach to restoring deforested and degraded land. He added that it involves bringing together people with diverse views and interests to create a plan in which both people and nature win.
The President and CEO of Engro Corporation, Ghias Khan, said that realizing the full benefits of forests requires more than simply keeping current forests standing, and is a daunting goal that governments can achieve with their available scant resources.