German bank pledges €13.5 million for KP’s billion tree tsunami project

ISLAMABAD: The KFW bank of Germany has pledged an amount of 13.5 million Euro for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Billion Tree Tsunami.

KFW will help in monitoring and capacity building of ground staff as well as communities associated with this project.

A delegation of KFW bank apprised the Minister during a meeting in his office on Monday. Delegation was led by Project Coordination Governance, Mr. Shaukat Ali. Other members of the delegation included Mr. Stephen Gampe and Mr. Johannes Dietz. Delegation admired the project and assured to working with the government of Pakistan in its efforts to restore ecosystem and fighting against climate change.

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam said that the project was not only important for Pakistan but also for the rest of the world and Pakistan was aware of its international obligations regarding climate change.

He further apprised that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s project had also been selected by the United Nation among successful projects around the world and would be presented as a model in upcoming Secretary General’s Summit on Climate Change to be held in September in New York this year.

Pakistan is also going to set up a fund for ecosystem restoration by a seed money of $50 million to open up opportunities for the partners to invest in this fund. Several Countries like Norway and China were keen to invest in this fund.

This fund will prove to be a credible and transparent vehicle towards achieving the target of 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Project. Adviser said that strong political will of the government remained the key to achieving the target of Billion Tree Tsunami. Apart from environmental benefits, this project had deep social implication especially regarding women empowerment in the region.

Many of the nurseries were owned and operated by the women in their backyard and could easily earn 13 to 15 thousands rupees in a month. He further added that main thing was creating awareness among people and communities.

As a result, 600 sawmills has to be shut down, most of them dismantled, due to unavailability of the timber. It was for the first time in the history of the province that KP had to import timber for domestic use.

Moreover, 13 guards lost their lives while fighting with timber mafia. Most important thing in the project was to create social responsibility and behavior change. He also briefed the basic contours and mechanism for upcoming 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Project.

He told that in current year Rs. 16 billion would be spent on said project half of which would be provided by the Federal Government.

Project will be planned and executed by the provincial governments while federal government will play a monitoring as well as supervisory role.

The delegation appreciated the efforts of the Federal Government and assured their support on the behalf of their institution in government’s clean green efforts.