Sungi Development Foundation and Sarhad Awami Forestry Ittehad (Safi) on Thursday urged the federal government to lift ban on commercial harvesting of forests in the country through a transparent and consultative process.
Addressing a news conference here at Peshawar Press Club (PPC), Riaz Ahmad of Sungi and Riaz Mohammad Khan of Safi said that despite the ban on cutting trees, deforestation continued at accelerated rate in the NWFP province.
They said that the federal government after the catastrophic floods of 1992 in Hazara and Azad Kashmir had banned depletion of forests but irony was that the concerned authorities failed to implement the ban to save natural resources.
Despite the ban, cutting of trees by local influential proved that there was no check and balance on forests. In result unprecedented volume of standing forests has been cleared off. Besides, both federal and provincial departments never took actions against the offenders, they said.
They were of the view that the continued ban on deforestation only favours the influential, timber mafia and the forest officials, who were receiving huge kickbacks from illegal cutting evading the eyes of law enforcement agencies.
They asked the government to introduce the transparent, sustainable and participatory approach in forest management through a consultative process, saying time is ripe to stop exploitation of precious natural resources for revenue generation.
"This resource needs to be managed for the economic and ecological well being of the local communities as envisaged in NWFP forest policy of 1999," they suggested.
They urged the NWFP government to establish the Forest Commission, activate the NWFP round tables and remove lacunas from Forest Ordinance 2002, before going for lifting the ban on commercial forestry.
They also stressed the need for immediately resolving the outstanding royalty issue in the Malakand circle and to replace the prefix sales system with the net sales system giving 80 percent of net sale proceeds to the owners.
They rejected changes being introduced in the policy for managing the cultivated forests and levying unilateral taxes on forest operations.
Apart from the public private partnership mechanisms, they also called for enhanced co-operation between the businesses and non-profit sectors for sustainable development.