MUZAFFARABAD, March 17: AJK Minister for Finance Shah Ghulam Qadir has called upon Wapda and the provincial governments to allocate funds from their budgets for the protection of forests and prevention of land erosion in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

He was speaking as chief guest at a consultative workshop on “Fresh Water and Watersheds”, held here at a local hotel on Sunday.

The workshop was jointly organized by the government of Pakistan and the World Conservation Union to generate a broad-based consensus to prepare an overall strategic framework for sustainable development in Pakistan for the next 20-25 years.

The thematic public consultations, culminating in a final synthesis workshop in the federal capital in early April, would help contribute towards preparation of the Pakistan Country Assessment Report for the Word Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) — a gathering of world governments, concerned citizens, United Nations agencies, multilateral financial institutions and other major actors from Aug 24 to Sept 4, 2002, in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Pakistan is gearing up to participate in the WSSD in accordance with the guidelines laid down the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).

He pointed out that the forests in the AJK were rapidly depleting due to a number of reasons and that the deforestation was causing climatic changes and disturbing the rainfall patterns.