Pakistan, Aug. 3 -- Global forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, with millions of hectares lost every year to agricultural expansion, commercial logging and increasingly intense wildfires driven by climate change. The accelerating decline is threatening biodiversity, worsening global warming and intensifying extreme weather events across the world.

Pakistan is no exception. The country loses nearly 11,000 hectares of forest cover annually, while forests account for only about 4.7 per cent of its total land area. Urban expansion, illegal logging, wildfires and the conversion of forests into agricultural and residential land continue to drive deforestation, increasing the country's vulnerability to floods, heatwaves, droughts and s...