President Arif Alvi urges youth to participate in plantation drive

ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi has urged the youth to ‘actively’ participate in the monsoon plantation drive to cope with the environmental challenges, ARY News reported on Thursday.

In his message on the occasion of national monsoon plantation campaign, President Ari Alvi stressed for plantation in residential and industrial areas as well as in markets and along the roads.

The president noted that climate change and increasing temperatures were resulting in melting of glaciers and floods. “Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change and it is faced with flood-like situation every year,” he added.

“We will have to accelerate efforts to grow forests,” pointing out that Pakistan’s total forest cover was 4.8 percent. According to international standards the forest cover area of any country should be about twenty-five percent.

“Increasing the forest cover will provide us effective protection against floods,” the president concluded.

A day earlier, former prime minister and PTI Imran Khan also launched the monsoon tree plantation campaign. Nearly, 100 million saplings will be planted in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the monsoon season.