The greenest day of the
calendar in India and a tree planting record
by 600,000 volunteers
10 million trees and a half planted in Uttar
Pradesh in a single day
The Forest Department of the Government of
Uttar Pradesh, the most populous State of
India, has succeeded in planting 10.5 million
trees in a single day on 31 July 2007. This
ambitious project, to which 600,000 people
participated, was meant to raise the awareness
of residents of the State towards the importance
of tree-planting and the vital role of trees
in correcting ecological imbalances, removing
the environmental pollution and increasing
tree cover. The decision to launch this unique
operation was taken at the Governmental level.
The saplings were planted by school children,
the local population, farmers, industrial
units, government departments and the forest
department. The object of the exercise was
to make tree plantation a people's participatory
activity with people from a vast cross-section
of society participating in the planting of
the saplings at 9,320 different sites across
the seventy districts of the State. Of these
43.72 % are farmer's sites, 9.14% forest department's
sites, 38.01% educational institution's sites,
6.33% other government department's sites
and rest sites are of other institutions.
The planting activity on all sites have been
photographed and will be authenticated. For
this 18640 independent authenticators have
been mobilized.
The pits for planting were dug in advance
and the plants to be planted were transported
to the sites in order to be planted in one
go on 31 July 2007. The entire activity was
carefully sequenced and detailed guidelines
were prepared in the form of booklet and widely
circulated.
The whole effort of planting over ten million
saplings on one day was coordinated centrally
from the State capital at Lucknow. Detailed
plans were prepared which included details
of the sites along with GPS based locations,
the species of saplings to be planted, the
source of the seedlings, as well as the name
of site coordinators, photographers and videographers.
In India, 31 July was an auspicious day as
it represented the first day of Shrawan, according
to the Hindu calendar. The exercise gave a
boost to the Billion Tree Campaign. Organizers
also recalled that the theme of World Environment
Day 2007 was "Melting Ice - A Hot Topic"
and the Forest Department of Uttar Pradesh
will also help to address the issues of global
warming, expansion of tree cover and carbon
sequestration.
There was large scale participation by many
citizens and institutions by way of contributions
in cash and kind for meeting the cost of plants,
their transportation, payment of photographers
etc. In many places the officers/staff of
the forest department have voluntarily donated
a day of salary for this purpose.
