Today, on the occasion of World Environment Day, I congratulate United Nations Environment Programme for adopting the right theme for the year 2011, ie "Forests: Nature at your Service" that underscores the intrinsic link between the quality of life, health of forests and forest eco-systems.
The World Environment Day is a wake-up call for the world community to realise that our land and water resources are under acute threat of degradation and badly impacting life of all living creatures, including human beings. Climate change is posing a major threat to our economy and existence and this is largely owed to carbon emissions in industrialised countries.
Undoubtedly, forests are at the heart of possible solutions to all the environmental problems. Their functions to absorb atmospheric carbon make them the lungs of the world and the key player in climate change mitigation, protection of land, water and wildlife resources.
The depletion of the forest wealth has drained the world's wetlands, depleted fish stocks and emitted enough heart-trapping gases to keep our planet warming for a long time to come. The problem is even more acute in Pakistan, which recently witnessed unprecedented floods that many believe is linked to the climate change.
Government is fully aware of the fallout of the challenge posed by forest depletion. Under Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it plans to increase forest cover from 5% to 6% by the year 2015. This will bring an additional one million hectares of land area under forest.
Pakistan has legitimate expectations from the newly developed mechanism of forest carbon trading whereby local people are compensated for their contributions to environment protection. I am pleased to see that PPP Government has actively participated in international negotiations on environmental issues and several programmes are underway to implement international agreements.
On this occasion, I urge upon environmentalists, civil societies and all stakeholders to make concerted efforts to protect the existing forests, increase areas under forest cover and turn Pakistan green by planting more trees to arrest the negative impacts of environmental degradation for a prosperous future.
Pakistan Paindabad.
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