KARACHI, June 23: The draft Sindh Forest Act 2011 must be passed into law to halt deforestation and bring about a significant change in Pakistan’s rapidly disappearing forests, says a recently released report.

The report, Along the River Indus: Engaging Communities, Sustaining Environment, prepared by the World Wide Fund for Nature — Pakistan (WWF-P) provides an insight into the achievements of various projects supported by the Indus for All Programme (IAP) Partnership Fund in the Indus Ecoregion and Indus Basin.

The report states that forests in Pakistan are in urgent need of protection and conservation. A semi-arid country with one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, Pakistan has less than 2.5 per cent of its area under forest cover as opposed to 33pc at the time of independence. Barely 10pc of Sindh is forested.

“It is only by amending the archaic Forest Act of 1927 that the issues (confronting the forests) can be addressed and new concepts in forest management be introduced,” says the study quoting a statement by the chief conservator of forests in Sindh.

It was this need, the report points out, that prompted the IAP-WWF-P to award a Partnership Fund Project to the Sindh forest department to reform forestry governance in Sindh. Under this project, a draft of the Sindh Forest Act 2011 was prepared after holding a series of consultative meeting with stakeholders and reviewing revised forest acts of other provinces. The draft is now ready to be sent to the law department for vetting.

Part of the project was also to rehabilitate the Pai forest, earlier known to be a natural riverine forest and a game reserve, located in Shaheed Benazirabad district. The forest faces a threat of extinction because of a chronic water shortage, encroachments by land-grabbers and woodcutting by local inhabitants.

“Neither the Sindh government nor the local VIPs are free of guilt as far as encroachments and hunting go,” the report states, specifying that some 500 acres of forest land had been denuded of trees and the land cleared for agriculture over the years.

Under the project, three abandoned watercourses that had previously formed the internal irrigation system of Pai were de-silted and made functional. Local community organisations were also set up to create awareness of forest conservation in people dependent upon the forest for livelihood.

“A lifeline has been provided to Pai Forest by the restoration of its irrigation system. It is now for the officials and local community members to take the preservation of the forest to a new level,” it says.

‘The blue gold of Sindh’

The report features the success stories of different projects initiated over the past six years under the first phase of the IAP.

This includes the project launched in collaboration with Goth Sudhar Sangat, a non-governmental organisation in a village in Shaheed Benazirabad district where efforts were made to promote the cultivation of indigo plant in Sindh.

The subcontinent, it says, was one of the earliest centres for commercial production of and processing of indigo where the dye was used in textile and printing.

However, by the early 20th century, the plant once growing wild on the banks of the Indus became extinct. No exact cause of its decline in Sindh is known.

Under the project, plant seeds were purchased from Muzaffargarh in Punjab and the first three acres of indigo were planted in Haji Keerio village. The experiment was a success and farmers were encouraged to switch from cotton and wheat to indigo, whose plantation costs are lower than that of the two crops. Now 20 acres are under cultivation in the Miani and Pai forest areas.

Under another project in the Chotiari Reservoir area in Sanghar district, 15 plots were prepared for backyard gardening, hand pumps were installed and drip irrigation was introduced with the support of the Sustainable Development Foundation.

The land around the Chotiari Reservoir has some of the most beautiful and diverse scenery found anywhere in Pakistan, says the report, adding that the Chotiari wetlands complex has not been declared a protected area despite its ecological importance.

Researches were also conducted on freshwater turtles with the help of the Zoological Survey Department and on marine cetacean fauna with the support of Cetacean Conservation Pakistan. While drip irrigation and other technologies were transferred to local communities in union councils of Jhirruk and Tando Hafiz Shah in Thatta district with the support of the Research and Development Foundation.

The report also contains details of Pakistan’s first biological wastewater treatment project (initiated in collaboration with Sindhica Reforms Society) and a rehabilitation project (launched with the support of Sangat Development Foundation) for Deh Akro II, a wildlife sanctuary and Ramsar site, which has been under tremendous pressure on account of shrinking of the wetland, deforestation and rampant hunting. Both project sites were located in villages in Shaheed Benazirabad district.

A climate change adaptation project was introduced in the Shigar River basin in partnership with the Gilgit-Baltistan Forest and Wildlife Department.

The IAP, whose first phase concluded in June 2012, is part of the Indus Ecoregion Conservation Programme, a joint initiative of the WWF-P and the provincial government which is based on a 50-year Indus Ecoregion Vision (2005-2055).

The IAP was established with the support of the Netherlands embassy.