On Tuesday Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman said that although planting trees was a necessity to reduce environmental degradation among other things, it is not and could not be the core public policy on global warming.
Talking to Dawn, Sherry Rehman said that for a water-stressed country like Pakistan that is predicted to become water-scarce by 2025 by the UN, “climate impacts are severe in multiple ways.”
She said that Pakistan needs urgent awareness about the scale of the climate emergency it is facing right now.
“Glacial lake outburst floods, flash floods, heatwaves and droughts are going to get worse if we do not take climate stress seriously both at home and abroad,” she added.
Ms Rehman is certainly right about the fact that reafforestation shouldn’t be the only policy measure. While a great way to reduce carbon from the air (because trees are natural “carbon sinks” ) tree planting may not be enough to offset the effects of climate change.
Writing in BBC Future, Michael Marshall says that while trees will “definitely help us slow climate change, they won’t reverse it on their own.” That’s because we already have so much Co2 in the air that even if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions right now the stage is set for warming.
That doesn’t mean that planting trees is useless – it means that reafforestation must be done with care — what species to plant and where to plant them – while pursuing other carbon reducing strategies at the same time.
