Deforestation and lumbering was done in past due to rapid, unbridled and unsustainable urban ‘development’ with no control and regulation on tree cutting, which has resulted in receding and now vanished green space in Quetta and its environs. This subsequently led to the loss of bio-diversity and has devastated local environment.  No trees mean bad air quality, loss of habitat and indigenous flora and fauna. Due to deforestation and cutting trees, water level is decreasing gradually in the city and surrounding region. There is a dire need to establish a joint platform between government and the citizens of Quetta to address this impending climate catastrophe.

This project will sensitize concerned citizenry and officials, mobilize and train community in climate action and lead by example through plantation drives in the city, establishing urban forest and restore the forests in the degenerated terrain of mountains surrounding Quetta. It aims to set an example as in how small initiatives can produce big result in improving environmental issues of the city and wider region.

Given the local dynamics of Quetta that breeds ghettoized mentality of the communities along religious and ethnic lines, this pilot project aims to create a multi-ethnic and multi-religious group of citizens, which will build a unified platform to recover the lost greenery of Quetta city along with its neighboring mountain range and climate action at large to first transform their city and then the whole district. Once trained and organized, they will be planting thousands of trees in their city. The associated benefits will be deploying rainwater harvesting, sagacious use of wasted water and transforming biodegradable waste into fertilizer. The project team will be integrating technology within the project like Arc GIS, SWAT MODELING as well as art such as painting murals and graffiti.

The goals of the project are:

1. 
   Tree plantation: Plantation of shade trees along roadsides and fruit trees into the parks and graveyards of the city to restore natural habitat, provide shade to the passersby in the scorching summers and an abode for the dwindling birds of the city.
   


2. 
   Advocacy awareness: Series of advocacy, awareness, and sensitization workshops on local environmental issues and how to resolve them. We will also use the medium of art and technology in this endeavor. This will engage all concerned stakeholders including local community members, activists and volunteers, relevant government officers, college, and university students of affected areas. Objective is to build a unified group of citizenry, a civil society led by youth whose aim is to recover the lost eco-system of the city and its surrounding areas by establishing new and expanding established green patches and further scaling up. 
   


3. 
   Urban forest development in mass area: This dense, thick forest within the city heart will not only provide the natural habitat for the endangered, indigenous flora and fauna but will also improve the air quality of the city, a carbon and pollutant sink acting as a lung within the concrete body of the city. The deep roots of the grown-up trees will act as a sponge and increase the underground water level.
   


4. 
   Restore a historical mountain terrain to its original green: recover to their original green reservoir – once a mountain/region is restored it can be used as a sample that can be later scaled up with more projects/resources. We will be coupling it with rain and snow water harvesting techniques and this will definitely result in recycling the wasted water which otherwise just gets into the sewage drains. Once the terrain is restored, it will add further to the bio-diversity of the region.