A two-day national workshop on “Establishing a geospatial platform for Pakistan's Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme and ecosystem restoration efforts” was inaugurated today in Islamabad. The workshop is being jointly organised by the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC), Government of Pakistan and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu-based non-governmental organisation for development of mountain areas in South Asia.
The workshop aims to initiate the groundwork for establishing a satellite remote sensing-backed geospatial platform to support ecosystem restoration efforts being made under the ministry’s Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme (TBTTP). This collaborative work also aims to initiate work on a five-yearly State of The Forest Report for Pakistan, based on improved digital field data collection methods and a globally accepted classification approach to ensure transparent forest cover monitoring in the country.
The TBTTP is the largest afforestation programme in the region and comprises tree plantation and assisted natural regeneration to support national and sub-national efforts at achieving SDG Target 15, which stresses protection and restoration of terrestrial ecosystems and promotes their sustainable use.
Speaking as chief guest at the event, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Climate Change, Malik Amin Aslam said that Pakistan’s forest restoration journey started in 2014 with the investment in planting trees in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The programme achieved the target of one billion trees in 2018. “After assuming charge at the federal level, we started the TBTTP,” the SAPM said.
In his remarks he highlighted that maintaining transparency and accountability is one of the key facets of this programme and we have always welcomed the engagement of international agencies. Initiation of five-yearly State of The Forest Report for Pakistan, based on improved digital field data collection methods and a globally accepted classification approach to ensure transparent monitoring of existing forest as well as plantation under the TBTTP.
He informed that the TBTTP is a nationwide initiative and has helped restore over one million hectares of degraded land across Pakistan so far. He further elaborated that the World Economic Forum, the United Nations Development Programme and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization have recognized the programme as the best replicable climate change mitigation and adaptation initiative. Most recently, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) termed Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Plantation (TBTTP) vision as a “Global Leader” initiative.
Director General of the Kathmandu-based non-governmental organisation for development of mountain areas in South Asia, Dr Pema Gyamtsho highlighted the significance of the Hindu Kush Himalaya region that is blessed with rich biological diversity and provides critical ecosystem services essential for food security and livelihoods of 1.9 billion people living in the mountains and the river valleys downstream. “The impacts of ecosystem degradation are now visible in the form of increasing frequency and intensity of natural calamities, threatening livelihoods and adding to the suffering and loss of human lives.”, he said.
He recognised the vision of Pakistan’s leadership which took the challenge of reversing ecosystem degradation while meeting the increasing livelihood demands in the mega initiative of the TBTTP. Gyamtsho said that his organisation for mountain development is committed to enhancing national capacities and strengthening information services in priority areas defined by national governments in the HKH region. “We believe that organisation's commitment and contribution to promoting sustainable development and biodiversity conservation will make a difference in the lives of HKH mountain communities.”
Speaking at the event, Mr Joudat Ayaz, Inspector General of Forests/Additional Secretary, MoCC, Pakistan provided an overview of the TBTTP and objectives of the collaboration with the Khatmandu-based organisation for mountain developoment. “We need to adopt global standards in forest cover monitoring and reporting, and adopt emerging digital technologies within the TBTTP and the entire forestry sector of Pakistan,” he said. He commended the young foresters for their passion to learn new technologies and noted that collaboration with regional knowledge centres is crucial for filling capacity gaps at the individual and institutional levels.
While talking to journalists at the event, Climate Change Communication specialist and media focal person at the climate change ministry Muhammad Saleem Shaikh said that communicating transparency and accountability of the climate change adaptation and mitigation-focused programmes and projects is top key priority of the incumbent government of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
He observed that absence of adequate transparency and accountability in public and environmental-development-related programmes and projects, implemented during previous governments, remained a major problem of the past government, creating space for mismanagement, red-tapism, nepotism in these development programmes. As a result, the fruits of the development programmes could not reach to the public, blocking improvement in lives and livelihoods of the people.
"Having learnt from the experiences of the past governments, the present PM Imran Khan-led government has assigned top priority to the ensuring of transparency and accountability at all levels of the implementation of the development programmes and projects including the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme (TBTTP). So, expected gains of the projects and their impacts on socio-economic lives and livelihoods as well as overall environmental development are achieved," the climate change ministry official Muhammad Saleem said.
He highlighted that the recent advances in computer vision, pattern recognition, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have led to the development of new machine-based learning, geospatial data mining techniques, which allows for the monitoring of forest ecosystems with higher accuracy.
Earth observation (e.g., optical, SAR, UAV, and LiDAR) data holds a great potential to provide a vital tool for monitoring forests with reliable transparancy for accountability and identifying attributes such as species, biomass, and carbon stocks, Mr. Shaikh told the media.
He said further that advanced machine-based learning and remote sensing approaches also offer a viable way to lower the uncertainty in estimates of forest ecosystem service loss, and are needed for the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of conservation programmess such as the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme.
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