Green and Clean Pakistan: A Dream
by Sana

“Let us make Pakistan green”, said Pakistani Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani on the launch of Spring Tree Planting Campaign 2010. “Social, cultural and heritage values of forests have their own significance” said PM and mentioned that forest area in Pakistan is hardly five percent of the total land mass which is far below the internationally recommended standard.

PM appealed and impressed upon every Pakistani citizen to actively participate in the Spring Tree Planting Campaign ensuring the aftercare and protection of the saplings for better economic development of Pakistan.

This can be called practically the first step of the Pakistani government to aware the citizens about the serious threat posed by the climatic change.
At a time when the major countries of the world have introduced environment-friendly and recycling schemes, very few people in Pakistan have heard about the term ‘Global Warming’, let alone work on it.
Major organizations of the world are highlighting the problems of Global Warming or climatic change rising from pollution and emission of harmful gases and have also started countering this crisis by introducing environment-friendly schemes.

According to the media reports, prior to the meeting of G-8 countries’ environment ministers, an alarming list has been issued that says that Pakistan ranked 25th among the countries emitting gases that pollute the environment, while the United States topped the list, European Union gets 2nd position, China 3rd, Russia 4th and India 5th.

This is indeed an alarming situation that Pakistan’s ratio of emitting harmful gases is much higher. The reason is that there is simply is no education or plan of action to reduce the emission of harmful gases, and there is no check and balance of government.

The aim is to devise a strategy to counter the critical threat of global warming by launching awareness programs on the mainstream media.
It is high time now that Pakistani government should start a stable and massive campaign to raise awareness in the populace and to give them sufficient incentives to use the bio-fuels and to consume lesser energy.
A responsible and proactive planning is required by the government to improve the dissemination of information to the grass root level to enable managing climate risks, policy concerns, and general awareness.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
It is that require each one of us bring this positive attitude in ourselves and accept the challenge to make our homeland cleaner and greener.