These days, with COVID-19 present nearly everywhere in the world, it seems impossible to get any projects done where a lot of people would be required to come together for the project. However, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, they did just that.
While maintaining social distancing, masks, and other safety precautions, 2-million people came together to plant 250-million trees along river banks, farmlands, and out front government buildings. The effort was a major step towards a government plan to combat climate change.
The group who came together to plant the trees included lawmakers, government officials and volunteers from nonprofit organizations.
Officials distributed the small saplings all across India to help local efforts to increase forest coverage. As a step to tackle climate change, the state has pledged to shade a third of the nation under tree cover by 2030. The nation’s total target acreage of 235 million acres would represent an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.
“We are committed to increase the forest cover of Uttar Pradesh to over 15% of the total land area in next five years,” said the state’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath. “In today’s campaign, over 20 million trees will be planted at the banks of the Ganges river, which will help in keeping this mighty river clean.”
The global warming efforts as a whole aren’t all easy. As the growing population and increased demand for industrial projects are placing greater stress on the land itself. With Global Warming on the rise and the need for quick action, tree planting, however, is a quick solution for getting started.
Mass tree plantings are an inexpensive method to draw carbon from the atmosphere, with hundreds of millions of trees being planted in countries around the world, including China, Pakistan, Madagascar, and the nations of the Sahel, especially Ethiopia, Senegal, and obviously India as well.
Many nations have targeted 2030 as the deadline for various sustainability-related goals. These efforts coincide with the UN’s 18 Sustainable Development Goals designed to encourage nations to solve the world’s largest problems. That list of problems includes poverty, hunger, pollution, access to clean water, education access, and more.
We all have a long way to go but it’s apparent India is wasting no time in getting their efforts off the drawing board and into the ground with their 250-million trees planted this July.
Sources for this article came from:
The Associated Press: https://apnews.com/f1d41fd4772742279da89e972dd8493d
Good News Network: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/two-million-indian-residents-host-tree-planting-campaign/