Critically threatened forests

It is a dire warning this country can ignore at its own peril. According to a review report issued by UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation about our forestry sector, Pakistan's natural forests are critically threatened due to widespread human activity. Illegal logging, conversion of forest areas into agricultural lands, and ever expanding human settlements are causing unprecedented damage to ecosystems and animal habitats. In fact, dangerous encounters between humans and animals are frequent in many places. Just the other day, in Battal area of Mansehra a common leopard killed a man who had ventured into the reserved forest near his home. This is a worrisome trend in a country with a tree cover of only 5.1 percent against the minimum required standard of 10 percent. It holds devastating consequences for the remaining forests, the people who depend on them for livelihoods, and the environment. Also getting exacerbated are other problems, such as carbon sequestration reduction and natural disasters.
Indeed, arresting environmental degradation is one of the top priorities of this government. A '10-billion-tree tsunami' campaign is under way and steps have also been taken to stop illegal logging. But the bigger picture seems to have escaped its attention. As the FAO report points out, no comprehensive assessment of the situation has been carried out with the objective of ranking hotspots on the basis of characteristics like value for species-richness, uniqueness of flora and fauna, economic importance and extent of the threat to ecosystems due to biotic and climatic factors. The report identifies several 'hotspots' calling for priority action. These include the chilgoza forests of the Suleman Range in Zhob, Sherani, Dera Ismail Khan, North and South Waziristan, and Chitral, which, it says, are endangered by excessive grazing, tree cutting for fuel and timber. The juniper forests of Ziarat and Kalat with slow growing trees as old as 1500 years, and the riverine forests of Sukkur are being similarly depleted. Then there are the mangrove forests of Karachi under pressure from ingress of industrial projects, habitat fragmentation and reduced freshwater flows from upstream. Unless these forests as well as others vulnerable to human activities get due attention environmental damage will become irreversible.
The way forwards is to fix flaws in the policymaking process, as suggested by the FAO. The top-town bureaucratic approach needs to change and a new forest policy formulated by involving real stakeholders. However, it will succeed only when the political leadership, both at the provincial and federal levels, is ready to deal with the challenge. For, they will need to allocate necessary resources for providing sustainable livelihoods to local communities, and also ensure that no licences are issued for commercial or agricultural use of forest lands.