THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: United Nations Resident Co-ordinator and UNDP resident representative Patrice Coeur-Bizot handed over certificates to the Forest Department at a function held at Vanasree Auditorium here on Tuesday for their achievements in planting trees under various schemes. The acknowledgement comes as part of the ‘One Billion Tree Campaign’ of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
“In the Indian Union, lies a small state washed by the Arabian Sea on the South Western tip of the Indian Peninsula called Kerala. With a geographical area of 38,863 sq. kms and a population of around 32 million people, the high population density of 819 people per sq. km exerts a lot of pressure on the land. This scenario is the reason the state has decided to increase her tree cover by planting trees outside forest areas as well as on degraded forests,’’ said the UNEP website.
The Social Forestry wing of the state’s Forest Department had embarked on a massive afforestation programme with the slogan ‘Global Warming - Tree is the Answer’ to mitigate the impacts of global warming. The various afforestation schemes that were appreciated by the UN include the My Tree programme, road-side planting of shade trees, Greening the Coast and Greening the State programmes.
My Tree Programme (Ente Maram Scheme):
This afforestation programme of Kerala Forest Department and the Kerala Education Department where school students across the state of Kerala participated, which was awarded the Indira Priyadarshini Vriksha Mitra Award by the Union Government in 2007. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests T.M Manoharan claimed that the school students took more care of the saplings than the college students.
Greening the Coast Scheme (Haritha Theeram Scheme):
The scheme which aimed at protecting the state’s coastline from natural calamities such as tsunamis, sea erosion and cyclonic winds by establishing a bio-shield of sand binding trees such as casuarinas along the coast, was carried out by the people living on the coasts. They had grouped themselves into 132 registered afforestation societies called Coastal Protection and Afforestation Society - locally known as Theera Samraskhana Vanavalkarana Samithi (TSVS). This highly successful programme had been nominated for the national Indira Priyadarshini Vriksha Mitra Award 2010.
Road-side planting of shade trees (Vazhiyora Thanal Scheme):
This scheme envisaged planting of shade trees on roadsides in Kerala and was initiated with the active participation of head-load workers from various trade unions in the state. As many as 1.47 lakh seedlings were planted during 2007 and 2010.
Certificate to Binoy Viswam
The UNEP acknowledged the efforts of the Forest Department in providing strong support to such programmes aimed at combating the ill-effects of global warming. As the conceptualiser of the various tree-planting programmes which resulted in the massive planting of 18.71 million seedlings during the past 4 years outside the forest area, Forest Minister Binoy Viswam was also given a certificate by the UNEP.