Former Prime Minister Imran Khan launched Pakistan’s first smart forest on August 25, 2021. The Smart forest project aimed to build 10 million trees in the Rakh Jhok area in Sheikhupura. The forest will spread over 3071 acres of land. The forest will be equipped with surveillance systems and sensor technology. The project will be completed by Ravi Urban Development Authority (RUDA) with the partnership of Sapphire Bay consortium and Huawei of China.
Project projected cost of 3 billion. The expected revenue from the project is 40 billion US dollars.
Climate-smart forestry is a forest management system emerging worldwide to manage forests in the present time while there are enormous environmental challenges and climate changes due to urbanization. The digital system which would be used in the smart forest, includes sensors to check water, soil, and tree growth. Noise sensors would also be used to monitor the sounds of vehicles and chainsaws to prevent illegal poachers and logging.
The project aims to planted average 3000 trees on daily basis. Already 30,000 trees have been planted and the project’s estimated timeline is one year. The project is inspired by the international Forest Ecological Management System (ForEco). It is based on Decision Support System (DSS) for a large number of customers. Dss is based on open data of large quantities to offer information related to CO2 utilization leaves nitrogen content, net primary production, photosynthetic active radiation absorbed, etc. The major data sources for the smart information process in the forest will be received from airborne observations and different satellites (Lyubenova et al, 2015).
The opposition may criticize the project, but do they think that it shouldn’t be there. In Pakistan, forest comprises only 5 percent of the total area with an alarming possibility of deforestation at the rate of 1.5% per annum. The efforts to increase forest area have failed over the past years due to ineffective policy formations. Therefore, the initiative of the smart forest is a great idea for protecting the ecological environment and biodiversity in the future.
Reference
Lyubenova, M., Pavlov, Y., Chikalanov, A., Spassov, K., Novakova, G., & Nikolov, R. (2015). Smart forest ecological management system. Journal of Balkan Ecology, 18(4), 363-374.
