Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Climate Change, Malik Amin Aslam has said that monitoring of forests resources is pivotal for containing deforestation and forest land degradation and taming global warming-caused climate change. There has been large-scale deforestation and land degradation in the country over last several years for want of effective forest monitoring system, which helps detect logging operations in forest areas and natural habitats of outstanding significance or critical importance, in a matter of minutes, he remarked while addressing a high-level event “launch of the National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS)” held here on Monday. “However, the forest monitoring system would prove a great help for the country regarding conservation, sustainable management of forests, enhancement of forest carbon stocks and monitor changes in the forest land use and detect deforestation land degradation activities,” he highlighted. Quoting figures, PM’s aide Malik Amin Aslam said that Pakistan loses forests over 27,000 hectares annually, which has led to massive environmental degradation and contamination of air quality, causing various serious public health hazards. The event was organised by the Ministry of Climate Change in support with the World Bank-supported US$ 7.81 million dollar Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) Readiness Project. The United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (or UN-REDD+ Programme) is a collaborative programme of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), created in 2008 in response to the UNFCCC decisions on the Bali Action Plan and REDD at the United Nations’ 13th Session on Climate Change. The REDD+ is an only concept, which was adopted by the countries under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010 for mitigation of climate change in forestry sector. He told the participants that while the heightened importance has been assigned by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led incumbent government to boosting forest cover and taming deforestation and land degradation in the country, a first-ever national forest monitoring system launched here today as a part of the prime minister Imran Khan’s vision for clean and green Pakistan to check unlawful deforestation and forest land degradation activities across the country for environmental sustainability and national climate action. Spelling out goals of the development of robust national forest monitoring system, Malik Amin Aslam told the participants that it’s overarching goal is establishment of a reliable forest resource information system for application in creating national forest policies, planning and sustainable development. The monitoring system would be based on measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) functions, deployment of which would help produce high-quality, reliable data on forests, including forest-carbon estimates, that are critical to the battle against climate change caused by among others deforestation and degradation of forests, he elaborated. The prime minister’s aide said further that the monitoring, reporting and verification of forest resources would employ satellite land monitoring systems (SLMS) and other data collection providing information for activity data (AD), National Forest Inventories (NFI) or other data collection providing information on emission factors (EF). The forest monitoring system would also identify and collect activity data for their relevant land use and its change (LULUC), forestry and REDD+ activities. For instance, spatial data on deforestation and afforestation/reforestation to be collected through satellite data, Malik Amin added. He noted that Pakistan is a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which has recognized deforestation as one of the main source of emissions of carbon resulting in global warming. “However, stemming deforestation and forest land degradation have been globally recognized as the best way to slow down global warming-induced climate crisis and achieve environmental sustainability goals,” Malik Amin highlighted. Quoting figures from the Fifth Assessment Report of the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Malik Amin said that deforestation and forest degradation contribute about 11 percent towards planet-warming carbon emissions. “However, it is the only forestry sector that holds a great potential of sequestering 31 percent of the heat-trapping CO2 emissions, which constitute the main greenhouse gas that is warming the planet,” he emphasized. Earlier, briefing about the World Bank-funded REDD+ Readiness Preparation Project, the Climate Change Ministry Secretary Naheed Shah Durrani said that the initiative has been a great help and support for implementation of the country’s first national forest monitoring system. She said that the system also involves a national monitoring web portal with dedicated server hosted at GCISC with supported geodatabase of forestry sector. This portal is solely aimed to facilitate data integration at the national level and for international reporting and preparation of GHG inventory. It is also planned to develop forest monitoring web portals in all the forest departments of provinces and territories for forestry data management and integration with national web portal, Ms. Durrani elaborated. She urged the provincial forest departments to play their effective role in implementing the national forest system for conserving the fast depleting forest resources of the country as a part of global climate action and environmental sustainability.
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