Major Gen. Shahid Nazir, CEO, Green Pakistan Initiative

General Shahid Nazir leads the Green Pakistan Initiative, the government’s flagship programme to expand forest cover and restore ecosystems across the country. Pakistan’s forest cover has historically been among the lowest in South Asia, and decades of deforestation have left landscapes more vulnerable to flooding, erosion, and the kind of runaway heat that has made recent summers increasingly life-threatening. The Green Pakistan Initiative sits within a broader national push to use tree planting and ecosystem restoration not just as climate mitigation but as a tool for rural employment, watershed protection, and long-term flood resilience. As its chief executive, Nazir brings the kind of institutional weight and implementation capacity to the programme that large-scale tree planting demands: coordinating across provinces, engaging local communities, managing supply chains for saplings at national scale, and measuring outcomes rigorously enough to justify continued investment. The work is unglamorous and complicated, but it is among the most tangible things Pakistan can do to build its own ecological defences in the years ahead.