PESHAWAR, Sept 29: The Sungi Development Foundation and Sarhad Awami Forestry Ittehad on Thursday urged the federal government to lift ban on commercial harvesting of forests through a transparent and consultative process. They said that deforestation continued at an accelerated rate despite the ban, increasing degradation.

Speaking at a news conference, Riaz Ahmad of Sungi and Riaz Mohammad Khan of SAFI said that the ban, imposed by the federal government in 1993 after the catastrophic floods of 1992 in Hazara and Azad Khashmir, had never been observed in true spirit, it has rather resulted in increased illegal cutting of trees by influential people.

Unfortunately, he said, there had not been any system of check and balance on forests’ cutting. Ironically, both federal and provincial departments had neither arrested the culprits nor were they willing to take any sincere and legal measures against the offenders. They said that continued ban only favours the influential people. They asked the government to introduce a transparent, sustainable and participatory forest management through a consultative process.

They said that time was ripe to stop exploitation of natural resources for the purpose of revenue generation. This resource needed to be managed for the economic and ecological well-being of the local communities as envisaged in the NWFP forest policy of 1999, they said.

They urged the government of the NWFP to establish the forest commission, to activate the NWFP round table to remove lacunas from forest ordinance 2002, before going for lifting the ban.

They also stressed the need for immediately resolving the royalty issue in Malakand circle and to replace the prefix sales system with the net sales system, giving 80 per cent of net sale proceeds to the owners.

They rejected changes being introduced in the policy for managing the cultivated forests and levying unilateral taxes on forest operations. Apart from the public-private partnership mechanism, they also called for enhanced cooperation between the businesses and non-profit sectors for sustainable development.

They expressed their support to all the organizations operating for the conservation and improvement of environment. They emphasized the need for establishing a national people’s platform for pooling strengths, building synergies and advancing the civil society’s environmental agenda in a more appropriate and organized manner.