For a greener Pakistan
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Dawn, Pakistan
Sunday, 07 Jun, 2009
WITH Pakistan being chosen by the United Nations Environment Programme as the venue of regional celebrations on the occasion of World Environment Day, various awareness-raising events are being organised in Islamabad. One of note was supposed to have been the tree-plantation ceremony, which unfortunately has been cancelled because of bad weather. Nevertheless, planting saplings in spring has become a common activity over the years, and has interested people from all walks of life. Tree-planting efforts are in line not only with UNEP’s Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign but also with other related UN instruments like the 1992 Rio Forest Principles, the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the Millennium Development Goals on environmental sustainability. Despite a number of national forest policies since the first forest policy was drawn up in the 1950s, our forests have continued to disappear. According to UN statistics, Pakistan’s forest area decreased from 2,527,000 hectares in 1990 to 1,902,000 hectares in 2005, the latter figure representing 2.5 per cent of the land area of Pakistan. This puts us in the category of countries with low forest cover — under 10 per cent of the total land area.
Sunday, 07 Jun, 2009
WITH Pakistan being chosen by the United Nations Environment Programme as the venue of regional celebrations on the occasion of World Environment Day, various awareness-raising events are being organised in Islamabad. One of note was supposed to have been the tree-plantation ceremony, which unfortunately has been cancelled because of bad weather. Nevertheless, planting saplings in spring has become a common activity over the years, and has interested people from all walks of life. Tree-planting efforts are in line not only with UNEP’s Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign but also with other related UN instruments like the 1992 Rio Forest Principles, the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the Millennium Development Goals on environmental sustainability. Despite a number of national forest policies since the first forest policy was drawn up in the 1950s, our forests have continued to disappear. According to UN statistics, Pakistan’s forest area decreased from 2,527,000 hectares in 1990 to 1,902,000 hectares in 2005, the latter figure representing 2.5 per cent of the land area of Pakistan. This puts us in the category of countries with low forest cover — under 10 per cent of the total land area.
Labels: Environment, Forestation, World Environment Day
posted @ 10:08 AM,
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