RAJKOT, India — A man in India’s western state of Gujarat has taken it upon himself to turn the entire state green over the next 20 years. So far, the owner of an old age home has led a team of over 500 to plant a quarter-million trees.
“We have planted 500,000 trees in tree guard and around 250,000 in a nearby forest,” said Vijay Dobria, the owner of Sadbhavna Vrudhashram.
“This needs a lot of patience and discipline because after planting saplings, we need to water them and give manure in fixed proportions at particular timings. We have also been working towards the conservation of trees.”
Dobria said more than INR 50 crore ($6.7 million) had been spent on the plantation of these trees. A lot of investment and care goes into maintaining fresh samplings.
“It is my resolution that I will turn the entire Gujarat green in the next 20 years,” Dobria said.
The state of Gujarat is, interestingly, home to an ecologically unique region of India out west called Kutch which features both deserts and marshlands. While considered hot wastelands of nothingness, deserts are from it.
They are biologically diverse ecosystems that provide their own services. Most importantly, deserts have high albedos, which means they reflect more sunlight than most other surfaces on Earth, and the desert sands act as natural carbon sinks. This is one of the countless reasons existing desserts need to be protected.
Dobria talks about the scale and scope of his massive reforestation initiative.
“I am assisted by more than 500 people who work as my staff, including more than 200 women,” he said.
“I am proud of my work as I am able to do two things simultaneously, increase the green cover of the state, which helps in saving the environment, and at the same time provide employment to so many people.”
Dobria planted the first sapling on June 5, 2014.
“Today, this campaign to plant trees from a small village called Paddhari, situated between Rajkot-Jamnagar (central west Gujarat), has reached villages and towns of Saurashtra (peninsular Gujarat),” he said.
“The entire road from Rajkot to Morbi, Bhavnagar is giving a cool shade of Green Revolution today with the trees planted by Sadbhavna Old Age Home.”
Sadbhavna has carried out this initiative without funding from the government, according to Dobria.
“Trees have been planted on the vacant land of cities and highways or on barren land in far-flung villages,” he said.
“Each planted tree is watered every third day and fertilized once a month for three years. In this way, it costs about 2500 to 2600 rupees ($33-35) to make a plant a tree. Which is much less than the cost of setting up an oxygen plant.”
He also believes this effort is playing an important role in making people aware of the protection and conservation of the environment.
India, earlier this year, announced that it had restored more than seven million acres of land over the past decade. As part of its national commitment at the Bon Challenge, the country had pledged to restore more than 32 million acres of deforested and degenerated land by 2020 and another 20 million by the end of the ongoing decade.
Large-scale reforestation or compensatory afforestation is no surprise course of action to bring the global climate to an equilibrium. However, it is more often than not ill-advised and results in further environmental disruption induced by the introduction of non-native, alien species in an ecosystem.
(With inputs from ANI)
Edited by Amrita Das and Krishna Kakani
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