Sounding like a ritual, though, the exhortation made by President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali to the people, largely focusing farmers, students and elected representatives, to actively participate in the Spring Tree Planting Campaign 2004, can be described as the crying need of the hour.
For drawing attention to the country's enormous forest potential, they will be seen to have rightly emphasised the need of redoubling efforts in that direction on a national scale.
It will be noted that in view of the rapid rate of increase in population, the small area under forest continues to fall short of the increasing need of the country, all the more so because of the changes in land use and deforestation of the natural forests at an alarming scale.
Needless to point out, in this kind of a situation, as persisting over decades in the past, the various annual tree plantation campaigns, though entailing heavy expenditure from the government, have failed to strike a balance between the demand and actual availability of trees and a great deal needs being done on a massive scale to bridge the yawning gap.
It will be worthwhile to point out that even the efforts of a decade in the implementation of the 25-year National Forest Master Plan, the forest area in the country has registered an increase of no more than 0.33 million hectares, out of the total reported area of 59.45 million hectares.
And an idea of how serious the situation happens to be may be had from the fact that our total forested area at 4.8 percent falls dismally short of the desired level of 25 percent.
More to it, the official statistics bring out that when the 25-year Forestry Sector Master Plan was drawn in 1992-93 the forest area in Pakistan was 3.48 million hectares, out of the total reported area 58.06 million hectares.
This increase as accomplished with a huge investment of billions of rupees, would appear to be virtually a drop in the ocean.
This should explain the government's urge last year, to launch an 'Incentive-oriented Package' for farmers to increase the forest area. It was, as such, encouraging to learn that that the Environment Division of the Federal Government had also prepared a Rs 1.15 billion project for forest promotion by farmers, which was to be launched during the last fiscal year (2003-04), and for which an amount of Rs 125 million was stated to have been earmarked.
Also due for launch was a Rs 275 million Forest Sector Research and Development project.
All this, together with the massive exercises in planting more trees in ceremonial plantation campaigns, sounds quite flattering indeed. But the situation on the ground, as reviewed from time to time, has continued to point to causes of anxiety emanating from the increasing knowledge of the enormous role the forests play in a variety of directions, including land conservation, regulated flow of water for irrigation and power generation, reduction of sedimentation in water channels and reservoirs and maintenance of ecological balance.
It will be in the fitness of things, as such, to make the current spring plantation campaign more purposeful and result-oriented, thereby setting the pace for massive afforestation in the real sense.
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