Claim: A visual shows the progress of the Billion Tree Tsunami project in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that was initiated by former PM Imran Khan.
Fact: The visual is unrelated to the Billion Tree Tsunami project. It was actually posted in 2022 by Dutch non-profit Justdiggit to show the progress of its regreening effort.
On 13 April 2026, Instagram account @pakistanrepublicc posted (archive) a visual allegedly showing the progress of the Billion Tree Tsunami project, which was initiated by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) founder and incarcerated former Pakistani PM Imran Khan. It comprises four aerial shots of “regreened” land.
Regreening is a process whereby environmental damage is reduced to restore degraded land, enhance soil, and plant trees.
The image shows that the four pictures are from June of 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022 while the text at the bottom states, “Imran Khan’s Green Pakistan vision, including the Billion Tree Tsunami Program, drove a remarkable Transformation.”
The caption accompanying @pakistanrepublicc’s post is as follows:
“In Pakistan, it has been rare for a public policy to deliver direct benefits to people without heavy borrowing or serving vested interests, yet the #BillionTreeTsunami stands out as a landmark achievement that restored ecosystems and reshaped the country’s environmental future; for the first time, Imran Khan’s #GreenPakistan vision, including the Billion Tree Tsunami and Ten Billion Tree Tsunami programs, drove a remarkable #environmentaltransformation, increasing #KhyberPakhtunkhwa’s forest cover from around 20 percent before 2013 to nearly 32 percent by 2026, as supported by assessments from the #KPKForestDepartment, UNDP, and the World Bank.”
Billion Tree Tsunami project
In February 2015, years before he was elected prime minister, Khan launched what was formally known as the Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation Project (BTTAP) in KP, where his party was in power at the time. He termed it a “watershed effort”, according to a report.
The campaign was part of the Green Growth Initiative (GGI), the report added, quoting Khan as saying the project would “create over 0.5 million employment opportunities”.
The PTI founder had said at the time that the Billion Tree Tsunami project aimed to boost KP’s forest cover from 20.3% to 22%. “The KP government has promised $150 million to the forest restoration effort,” Dialogue Earth, formerly known as The Third Pole, reported.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), a global environmental organisation, KP was the “first sub-national entity” to register with the Bonn Challenge and became the first one to complete it “in half the planned time”.
“The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030,” the IUCN website states.
More than a year later, Dawn reported that ecologists had expressed reservations that “wrong species” of trees were identified “for wrong places”.
In 2018, an investigation by The News asserted that there were contradictions between ground realities and the claims made by Khan about the number of trees planted under the Billion Tree Tsunami project.
The same year, the project came under the radar of Pakistan’s anti-graft watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which announced that it would “be investigating allegations of embezzlement”.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the image and found it to be unrelated to the PTI’s Billion Tree Tsunami project in KP.
The visual was actually posted on 9 June 2022 by Justdiggit, a Dutch non-profit fighting climate change and regreening degraded land. In an Instagram post, the organisation wrote it showed their effort in Tanzania over four years, changing the area “from dry, dusty desert to green, expanding savannah” by constructing crescent-shaped water bunds.
“In sub-saharan Africa, 60% of land is degrading (see above, June 2018), threatening the livelihoods of millions. More and more people and animals are contending over fertile land that is shrinking year by year. To reverse this, we joined forces with @lead.tz and local communities to restore the land by digging #earthsmiles, and the results have blown us away. By working with nature and not against her, we have the opportunity to secure food and water stability for millions of people, restore nature and reverse global warming,” Justdiggit wrote.
A comparison of the visual included in the viral Instagram post by @pakistanrepublicc from 13 April 2026 (L) and the post by Justdiggit on 9 June 2022 (R).
@lead.tz is the Instagram account of LEAD Foundation, an non-governmental organisation focused on environmental restoration.
The same images are also available on Justdiggit’s website and a comparison visual — which also includes a snapshot from June 2024 — was shared more recently on its Facebook page. The post identifies the location as Pembamoto in the Tanzanian capital of Dodoma.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has also written about the same effort in a blog titled “Pembamoto rainwater harvesting project.”
Therefore, Soch Fact Check concludes that the visual is falsely linked to the Billion Tree Tsunami project in Pakistan.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the visual posted here, here, here, and here on Facebook and here and here on X (formerly Twitter).
The latter X post by @tanolipak is likely where the claim originated as it was shared on 12 April 2026 before any of the aforementioned instances. Having garnered over 113,500 views so far, it is accompanied by the following caption:
“In Pakistan, it has been rare for a public policy to deliver direct benefits to people without heavy borrowing or serving vested interests, yet the #BillionTreeTsunami stands out as a landmark achievement that restored ecosystems and reshaped the country’s environmental future; for the first time, Imran Khan’s #GreenPakistan vision, including the Billion Tree Tsunami and Ten Billion Tree Tsunami programs, drove a remarkable #environmentaltransformation, increasing #KhyberPakhtunkhwa’s forest cover from around 20 percent before 2013 to nearly 32 percent by 2026, as supported by assessments from the #KPKForestDepartment, #UNDP, and the World Bank.”
Conclusion: The visual is unrelated to the Billion Tree Tsunami project. It was actually posted in 2022 by Dutch non-profit Justdiggit to show the progress of its regreening effort in Tanzania.
Background image in cover photo: ImranKhanOfficial
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