PESHAWAR, Jan 29: The United Nations Development Programme has arranged a funding line of euro 2.2m to promote tropical forests in Pakistan during the next five years.

The funding facility extended by the European Commission would be utilized for the promotion of tropical forests through disbursements of small grants among the private sector stakeholders involved in the forestry sector, ie non-governmental organizations, community based organizations (CBOs) and other non-profit organizations, associations and networks registered in Pakistan.

Out of the total funds, a sum of euro 400,000 would be distributed among the qualified parties during the first year (2003) of operations of the UNDP’s small grants programme (SGP) — formally launched at a simple ceremony held at the Pakistan Forest Institute here on Tuesday.

The organizations associated with forest management and having capacity and experience in social mobilization for natural resource management could apply for availing the funding line which would be extended in the shape of grants ranging between Euro 20,000 and Euro 100,000 per project.

Intending parties would need to prepare small projects of their own for which apart from fulfilling other requirements each one of them would also need to arrange 20 per cent of the total estimated cost of a single project — in terms of cash or in the form of material.

Pakistan is one of the four countries where UNDP has planned to launch SGP with a total EC funding line of approximately Euro 15m. The other three countries are Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.

Explaining salient features of the SGP, Saleem Ullah, UNDP’s Islamabad-based coordinator, said that for the year 2003 the programme would only fund initiatives in the scrub and mangrove zones of Pakistan and the scope of the same might well be expanded to other vegetation zones at a later stage.

Initially, the programme would focus on mangroves along the coastal line of Balochistan and Sindh and scrubs of NWFP, he added.

The programme, Mr Saleem said, would be focusing to promote initiatives supporting sustainable forest management in addition to assisting projects which ensure harmonization and mainstreaming with the government and the donor agencies’ policy regarding poverty and gender issues.