ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Prime Minister Imran Khan will launch the Protected Area Initiative in Islamabad on Thursday.
As a part of its post-COVID-19 “Green Stimulus” vision, Pakistan is launching its “Protected Areas Initiative” with the dual objective of protecting nature while also generating jobs for unemployed youth.
Under the initiative, the protected areas coverage in the Country will be enhanced to 15% of the Country’s land area from the current 13% while also ensuring proper management and effective governance of the existing protected areas – most of which exist only as “paper parks”.
Prime Minister Imran Khan, himself an avid environmentalist, will be personally announcing and leading this initiative with the announcement of 15 National Parks, covering a land area of over 7300 sq km, spanning the mountains in the north to the scrub forests in the plains and a marine protected area in the south of the Country.
Out of these 9 are new and recently declared NPs while six others were notified, but never protected.
All will be made fully functional NPs for the first time, with proper ecological management and governance.
In the initial phase, almost 5,000 direct nature jobs will be generated for the youth.
