Quetta [Pakistan], October 31 : A huge forest fire broke out in the pine forest in the Dera Ismail Khan area of the Suleman Range in Pakistan on Tuesday night and spread to the neighbouring Sherani district of Balochistan, on Wednesday, as per Dawn.
The Sherani district administration immediately sent firefighters and forest department officials to the hilly area to bring the fire under control.
"Efforts are underway with the help of Frontier Corps and levies to control the fire," a senior official of Sherani district told Dawn, adding that winds were hindering the fire-fighting operation.
Dawn reported that the fire has engulfed a large forest area of Sherani district, with reports saying that efforts by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government so far have remained futile.
The forest fire came as a grim reminder of the 2022 blaze that destroyed hundreds of pine trees on the same mountain range, causing losses in millions of rupees. For many days, the fire could not be controlled despite hectic efforts by forest officials, security forces along with locals. Finally, the Iranian government sent an aerial firefighter Ilyushin-76 aircraft that brought the forest fire under control after its two sorties.
According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the current forest cover of Pakistan is extremely inadequate when considering exposure of the country to future climatic threats.
A number of factors have contributed to deforestation, prominent among these being poverty, population pressures and lack of fiscal space for strong policy initiatives in protecting forests.
Even though Pakistan is a small emitter of global GHG emissions, it is included in the top eight countries in the world most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
The forestry sector, commonly considered to bear a high natural capital value for the society and a safeguard against climatic threats, has suffered heavily during the past two decades in the country as per the UNFCCC.
The increasing trend in projected emissions from forest sector has been attributed to the threat of accelerated deforestation and forest degradation in many parts of the country in the wake of rising population and associated wood demands, weak tenure governance, encroachments and land cover changes superimposed by adverse impacts of climate change.