ISLAMABAD   -  Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Climate Change Malik Amin urged provinces to set up forest monitoring units to stem deforestation.

A statement issued by the ministry referring to the SAPM on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam said the monitoring of forest resources through remotely sensed data and backed by field-based observations is vital for effective assessment of forest-related greenhouse gas emissions that have negatively altered the global climate system and their removals from atmosphere to slow down global warming.

Addressing a national consultative event held here on Tuesday, he said that sustained monitoring of forest resources and changes in forest lands and their overall outlook is at the heart of efforts for stemming deforestation, degradation of forests and environmentally-harmful forest land use changes.

Given the importance of technology-based forest management, the amount of information gathered during forest inventories has thus grown rapidly and has, in turn, helped improve ability of forest scientists, researcher and policymakers to survey and manage many services, such as: biodiversity, ecosystem restoration and carbon sequestration from atmosphere to slow down climate change and reduce climate shocks in shape of floods, heatwaves, cyclones, 

crop failures, wildfires and loss of biodiversity, the PM’s aide Malik Amin elaborated. Malik Amin Aslam highlighted that technology development, adaptation to country circumstances and its adoption by existing national forest systems, as suitable to country needs, offer a promising potential to improve accuracy of field measurements in forests, reduce the time and the costs accruing from field sampling activities and to improve the extrapolation of forest-based estimates over large spatial scales, including remote and/or conflict areas. New technologies could be, however, also a workable way for supporting the implementation of transparent national forest monitoring systems for sustainable forest conservation and management, he added.  The PM’s aide further said that today the adoption, adaptation, and viability of technologies for forest monitoring and sustainable management by national and subnational entities, private companies, research and academic organisations, NGOs, and civil society could also face many constraints that limit use of such technologies. 

Among them, the inadequate technical skills in using those new technologies were the most  important, which are being faced by the federal and provincial forest departments, he added.

But, it was a matter of joy to see that now such constraints were being addressed through training and capacity building programmes being organised by the climate change ministry’s REDD+ Pakistan project, Malik Amin remarked.