Socioeconomic impacts of the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami (TBTT) plantation project on the participating communities

Sammanfattning: Tree plantations are regarded as one of the key components to fight the environmental challenges. Such plantations may impact the livelihoods of the local populations in both positive and negative ways. The Ten Billion Trees Tsunami (TBTT) project is being carried out in Pakistan to counter the climate change, with additional goals to also generate economic stimulus in the participating areas. There is scarcity of research work on how the livelihoods of the participants of the project are getting affected because of the project. This thesis work investigates the socio-economic impacts of the TBTT project on the workers and participants of the project, and judges whether the project has been beneficial to the people or not. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the onsite laborers and local women entrepreneurs running associated small-scale nurseries. The results indicate that the project has made some strides in incrementing the capital assets and capabilities of the participating populations and has also been successful in reaching the marginalized segments of the society like women – though vital problems related to the wages, working conditions and wholistic monitoring remain. Moreover, the results indicated that the prosperity is reached through a myriad of ways – depending upon how the improved assets and capabilities are utilized. The results fill a gap regarding the implications of TBTT for the local communities in terms of livelihood enhancement. The lesson for other plantation projects is that such projects have the potential to positively affect the socioeconomic conditions of the native populations – especially if project is avoiding many of the pitfalls at the outset and by making a concerted effort to reach the marginalized segments of the society like women. Nevertheless, concrete improvements in the operational and management aspects of the project must also be made for the socioeconomic benefits to reach their full potential.