Uzair bin Farid

The government has accelerated efforts to turn Pakistan into a greener country on the same lines as China. To this end, the government has decided to spend Rs3.9 billion on upscaling the Green Pakistan Program, according to the Public Sector Development Program 2023-24. The amount will be spent diligently on different components of the program. There are four components of the program. They include enhancement of forest cover, biodiversity conservation, protected areas initiative, and Zoological Survey of Pakistan. The forest cover component will ensure that the country regrows its forests lost over the past many decades. To that end, the “10 Billion Tree Tsunami” program is already underway, which has achieved the plantation of almost 2 billion trees over the past four years. The target set for the number of trees to be planted in the four-year interval of 2019-23 was 3.29 billion.

This is, however, a very ambitious target which is difficult to be met without mobilising full state machinery for the said purpose. The government has also decided to spend $26.5 million on “Capacity Building on Water Quality and Monitoring” to ensure the smooth supply of clean drinking water to the population. The project on water quality and monitoring will be complemented with funds to be spent on “climate resilient urban human settlements units” which will monitor the transformation of urban centres of the country into habitable and sustainable spaces. The total funds to be spent on climate-resilient urban human settlements will be Rs20.95 million. The total allocation for the Climate Change Division in PSDP 2024 is Rs4.05 billion.

All of the funds for the projects under the Climate Change Division will be financed by the revenues of the government without any foreign aid. Of these Rs4 billion, Rs100 million will be spent on “Pakistan Biosafety Clearing House for GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) Regulation” the approval for which has already been granted by the Divisional Development Working Party of the Planning Commission. The PSDP allocation of Rs4.05 billion for the Climate Change Division in FY24 represents a 57% decrease over the allocation for the previous fiscal year when it was Rs9.5 billion. The need to spend funds on projects which come inside the domain of Climate Division cannot be stressed more. Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world from the spectre of climate change. It makes it all the more important that the government seriously devises and implements policies which bring resilience to national infrastructure and protect the people from the worst effects of climate change.

Credit: INP-WealthPk