Former govt allocated Rs1.93bn to its flagship ‘TBTTP’

ISLAMABAD: The former government allocated some Rs1.93 billion under its flagship ‘Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Programme (TBTTP)’ in the outgoing financial year 2021-22, reveals Economic Survey 2021-22.

Of this amount, Rs755.37 million were allocated for Sindh, Rs692.17 million for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Rs222.56 million for Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Rs188.91 million for Punjab, Rs54.09 million for Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), and Rs21.93 million for Balochistan, the survey reveals.

The funds were spent on the plantation and regeneration, it further reveals.

The document recalls that the implementation of the TBTTP was initiated in 2019 with a total cost of Rs125.1843 billion for four years (2019-2023) to plant/regenerate 3.296 billion plants across the country.

The programme is being implemented by the provincial forest and wildlife departments through the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) on a 50 percent cost-sharing basis except for AJK and GB which are 100 percent funded by the federal government through the public sector development programme (PSDP), the document mentions. The programme has achieved 579.093 million plants during July-March FY2022 and cumulatively has attained 1586.18 million plants till March 2022, it adds.

Through this programme, 327,877 man-months were employed till March 2022.

The MoCC developed a robust digital reporting system to ensure the transparency of TBTTP activities, the survey says. The system captures all activities including block plantation, linear plantation, assisted natural regeneration and nursery management system performed under the forest component of TBTTP, it says.

In addition, the Geographic Information Centre (GIS) team of TBTTP developed a web-GIS monitoring portal which is capable to visualize the plantation sites geographically with detailed information of the site and processed satellite imagery of pre and post plantation status, the survey mentions.

“Pakistan is facing growing environmental challenges, which have an obvious socioeconomic consequence. Heat waves, impacting crop cycles, floods, drought and degradation of water and air quality posing negative impact [on] quality of life. To cope with the challenge of climate change matters should be addressed on both mitigations and remedies front. In this context, the government has taken multiple measures,” according to Economic Survey 2021-22.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022