Karachi: The Sindh government has announced its intention to implement a new forest policy in its efforts to protect and expand the province’s forest cover, a news source reported. The ‘Sindh Sustainable Forest Management Policy’, as this framework is to be named, was formulated following the Supreme Court’s directives in which it had ordered the retrieval of encroached forest land.
The apex court had ordered the provincial executive to retrieve the said and initiate afforestation efforts on an urgent basis. The process needs to begin as soon as possible because there is a possibility that the vacated land might be re-encroached since it is too vast and remote to easily manage in the kacha areas of Sindh. The total land available for afforestation in the province is somewhere around 600,000 acres.
The policy proposes protection of existing forest stock in irrigated plantations and riverine as well as community engagement in the afforestation process to hasten the process. Any alternate to community engagement is a hefty financial investment which will be difficult for the government to implement and manage.
