In 2021, the Global Climate Risk Index ranked Pakistan as the 8^th most climate-affected country in the world. On April 17, 2024, Pakistan’s Envoy to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Faisal Niaz Tirmizi, in his address to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Assembly said that by 2024, Pakistan has become the 5^th most affected country due to extreme weather and climate change.

Anyone living in Pakistan has now experienced the harsh realities of climate change firsthand. From avalanches in the Himalayas near Kashmir to heatwaves in Karachi, and from maize crop damage in Sialkot to floods in Chaman, every corner of the country has been affected. A UN fact-finding mission’s August 2024 report highlights the severe impact of this year’s floods, which displaced 33,178 people in Sindh and Balochistan, submerged 25 schools and a police station, and destroyed 80 per cent of crops. This follows the catastrophic 2022 floods, which damaged or destroyed over 2.1 million homes and, according to the World Bank’s post-disaster needs assessment, caused $14.9 billion in damages and $15.2 billion in economic losses.

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This raises the question: why are we still not treating it with the seriousness it demands, and why do our so-called pro-sustainability initiatives often merely masquerade as sustainable?

This phenomenon of pseudo-sustainable activities is known as ‘Greenwashing’. A more detailed definition of greenwashing would be the practice of making misleading claims about the environmental benefits of a policy, product or service that paint eco-friendliness. While in the past, this tactic has been a tool of the corporations to capitalize on the growing demand of sustainability without actually investing in it, now with increasing awareness among the voting population, it has also become a political tool to gain votes. And countries like Pakistan have a lot to lose if this practice is not eliminated, because it is not just persisting the environmental damage but also hampering much-needed climate mitigation measures and energy transition.

Let’s look at the ‘Billion Tree Tsunami Project’ to understand this phenomenon better.

Touted as one of the most successful and groundbreaking efforts of a certain political party, this initiative came into was launched in 2014, to “combat deforestation and restore degraded landscapes” in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Keeping aside the allegations of corruption and misreported number of trees planted, even the actual planted trees have been denounced by the ecologists because their harmful impacts outweighed the benefits.

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Despite getting international acclaim, the Billion tree tsunami project included plants like conocarpus, dodonea and eucalyptus, which have already been proven unsuitable for the native soil. WWF-Pakistan’s first third-party monitoring report revealed that conocarpus was planted in Peshawar, eucalyptus was planted in Peshawar, Kohat and Bannu, and other species including dodonea were also planted in Peshawar and Bannu.

In a report by Dawn, Dr Lal Badshah, an ecologist and Assistant Professor at University of Peshawar, Department of Botany, said that “conocarpus plants were tried in Karachi, Sindh, and it was found that the plant left far-reaching negative impact on the environment in term of pollen allergy. Those plants were also found negatively impacting other herbs and flora too while birds avoided to visit those plants as habitat for nesting.” The plantation of conocarpus and dodonea had an impact so severe, that the Capital Development Authority (CDA) in Islamabad had to spring into action to cut down the harmful trees to control pollen allergy.

Speaking to HUM News, Dr Saeeda Yousaf Assistant Professor at University of Peshawar, Department of Environmental Sciences concurred with Dr Lal Badshah. “Back when this project started we objected to their choice of plants. We raised this issue at every platform possible to stop them from planting trees that were water intensive and not suitable for the soil. The results of that are visible now, because those plants could not have flourished in the conditions in which they were planted and they didn’t”.

She says, however, that with the passage of time, the results of wrong choice of plants and lack of coordination amongst the departments has yielded some lessons, and now the project has actually started bearing fruits.

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Former Project Director of the Billion Tree Tsunami Project, Muhammad Asif, spoke on this issue with HUM News and even he concurred with the mistakes in choice of plants. He said, “We had a manual that detailed what species were to be planted in what regions, according to weather and soil conditions. However, there were some mistakes which were rectified later. But most of this criticism was only political… We never planted these trees like Eucalyptus or Cornocopus.”

However, this argument can be checked through the third-party independent monitoring report of WWF-Pakistan, that said initially there were 58 per cent Eucalyptus plants and 5 per cent Conocarpus plants, out of the total number of plants. In 2017 Eucalyptus still made up for 19 per cent of the total plants, second-highest after Chir at 21 per cent, and 3 per cent of the plants were still Conocarpus.

Responding to this, PD Asif said, “Most of these water-intensive plants were planted by National Highway Authority (NHA). Even today there are Eucalyptus trees on both sides of Islamabad to Peshawar motorway, but no one has criticized them. But even for criticism to happen, someone needs to do something. If no one does anything then of course no criticism comes either.”

While at the topic of unsuitable trees, there are also earlier reports, from 2017 of conocarpus plantation in Karachi, as well as Eucalyptus. It was only months after their plantation that reports emerged that the deep roots of these non-native species were depleting underground water at a much faster rate than native species would. Additionally, their roots were causing damage to road infrastructure, nearby buildings, and water and sewerage pipelines.

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While the “Billion Tree Tsunami” project have done wonders in terms of educating the people on deforestation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it has done little to nothing to stop continued deforestation elsewhere in the country, or even in the province.

Ironically, it was also under the government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), in 2014, that the ban on deforestation – implemented in 1993 – was lifted. Pakistan has one of the lowest forestation rates in the world and about 27,000 hectares of forests are cleared every year, a report by World Bank in 2023 said.

Another report, Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Living Forests Report, said that the amount of wood taken from forests and plantations each year may need to triple by 2050 even with increased recycling, reuse and efficiency.

WWF’s report says that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s forest cover has increased by six percentage points since the beginning of this project till 2023. However, data by Global Forest Watch shows that the total forest cover of Pakistan has, in fact, declined by nearly 1 per cent over the same time period.

Now that the Billion Tree Tsunami has turned into ‘Ten Billion Tree Tsunami’, and the lessons have been learnt, there might be some improvement going forward in the true impact of the project.