A system dynamics model for billion trees tsunami afforestation project of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan: Model application to afforestation activities

As part of the global effort to plant billion trees, an afforestation project is launched in Pakistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province to conserve existing forests and to increase area under forest cover. The present study is designed to build a Systems’ model by incorporating major activities of the Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation Project (BTTAP) with special focus on afforestation activities to estimate the growth in forest area of KP. Availability of complete dataset was a challenge. To fix the model, the raw data taken from the project office has been utilized. Planning Commission Form 1- Phase I & II helped us with additional information. We relied on the data available for one and half period of the project as rest of the data is subject to the completion of the project. Our results show that the project target to enhance area under forest differs from the target to afforest area under the project. The system dynamics’ model projection shows that the forest area of KP would be 23.59 million hectares at the end of the BTTA project, thus having an increase of 3.29% instead of 2% that has been initially proposed. However, the results show that the progress to meet the target in some afforestation classes is slow as compared to other categories. Farm forestry, plantation on communal lands and owners’ plantation need special focus of the authority. Deforestation would affect 0.02 million hectares area of the project. The model under study may be used as a reference model that can be replicated to other areas where billion tree campaigns are going on.