The webinar discussed how Pakistan’s forests and arable land are most at risk from unsustainable housing policies and the timber mafia.
Experts have urged the government to declare a nature conservation emergency in Pakistan to protect the population from climate change effects such as water scarcity and food insecurity.
A national webinar hosted by the Development Communications Network (Devcom-Pakistan) covered the nature conservation emergency issue. The webinar discussed how Pakistan’s forests and arable land are most at risk from unsustainable housing policies and the timber mafia.
They highlighted the grave threats they are posing to the nation’s biodiversity and its ever-dwindling forests. To protect nature, strict application of the law is urged. The mafias are overusing natural resources, destroying forests, and harming ecological habitats.
The keynote speakers included Rab Nawaz, a senior expert on area-based conservation for WWF International, and ZB Mirza, one of Pakistan’s most renowned and experienced biodiversity scientists.
Munir Ahmed, the executive director of Devcom-Pakistan, Dr. Muhammad Abdullah, the director of the Cholistan Institute of Development Studies (CIDS) at Islamia University in Bahawalpur, Aftab Hussain Bokhari, an expert on conservation in the AJK region, Moazzam Khan, an expert on marine biodiversity, Azhar Qureshi, a graduate of the National Defense University, and Mahrukh Khan were additional guests speakers.
ZB Mirza asserts that Pakistan’s water resources are rapidly depleting as a result of the degradation of its forests and biodiversity, in spite of numerous conservation initiatives and best practises. Stakeholder disagreements have made natural resources more vulnerable.
Furthermore, the differences between ecologists and timber foresters over sustainable practises need to be settled. Reduced biodiversity, soil erosion, microbe decline, and subsoil water fertility are all effects of lost forests.
The Indus Blind Dolphin population, which is slowly but surely recovering, is one example of how Pakistan has succeeded in bending the curve in relation to the Convention on Biological Diversity, according to Rab Nawaz of WWF.
The Kashmir Markhor, the national animal of Pakistan, has been saved from extinction. He continued to emphasise that communities, civil society organisations, and departments must work together for this to be possible.