Punjab’s officially recorded forest area has experienced a staggering decline, shrinking from approximately 3.4 million hectares to just 665 thousand hectares after 2011, a new analysis of five decades of official data has revealed today.
The dramatic reduction is primarily attributed to an administrative reclassification of land, fundamentally altering the statistical landscape of the province”s forestry sector.
The findings, part of a long-term study by the Gilani Research Foundation, indicate that prior to this sharp drop, the province”s forest cover had shown remarkable rigidity for nearly forty years, hovering between 3.3 and 3.5 million hectares. This prolonged stability highlighted the intense land-use pressures from agriculture and urban expansion, which limited any potential for forestry growth.
A major structural shift occurred in the early 2010s, when the reclassification, which included the transfer of large tracts in Cholistan, led to the current, much smaller official forest base. This redefinition has significant long-term implications for conservation planning and the potential for future resource extraction.
The analysis also sheds light on the province’s timber production, which has been marked by pronounced instability rather than sustained growth. Output has oscillated sharply over the decades, with intermittent spikes exceeding 100 thousand cubic metres following years of minimal harvesting. This pattern suggests that timber extraction is often driven by short-term policy decisions or salvage operations, not by steady forest regeneration.
Despite the volatility in physical output, the monetary value of timber has risen substantially, recently reaching over Rs250,000 million. This divergence between volume and value indicates that market prices are increasingly reflecting resource scarcity and regulatory constraints rather than abundance.
A similar trend was observed in firewood production. While physical output has contracted steadily over the long term, falling from over 350 thousand cubic metres in earlier decades to low double-digit figures, its economic value has soared. In recent years, the market value of firewood reached tens of billions of rupees, signalling resilient demand and tightening supply.
Taken together, the data suggests Punjab’s forestry sector has transitioned from one defined by resource availability to one shaped by scarcity. The consistent rise in the economic value of forest products, despite declining or stagnant physical volumes, points to a future where managing limited resources will be paramount.
This trajectory raises significant sustainability concerns, as rising demand could place additional stress on the province’s constrained forest resources without substantial investment in afforestation and alternative energy sources. The analysis concludes that the sector”s future now hinges less on expansion and more on the effective management of scarcity to balance economic needs with environmental preservation.