24 lakh plants in 6 dists during monsoon: How govt plans to turn south Haryana greener

Gurgaon: Six districts in south Haryana are all set to plant 24 lakh saplings during the monsoon. The forest department has said Faridabad will lead the initiative by planting 5 lakh saplings, followed by Mahendergarh with 4.9 lakh saplings.

Palwal and the city will plant 3.7 lakh and 3.4 lakh saplings, respectively, while Nuh and Rewari is planning plantation of 3.3 lakh saplings each.

Despite the annual large-scale plantation drives, the city’s urban area has a forest cover of less than 1%. This year’s extensive plantation effort aims at increasing the green cover.

To ensure the success of the plantation drive, the forest department plans to involve local communities and raise awareness about the significance of trees. By engaging citizens, the department plans to promote the survival and growth of saplings.

The plantation efforts will likely be accompanied by educational campaigns to inform people about the advantages of maintaining and protecting the newly created green spaces.

AP Pandey, chief conservator of forest (south Haryana), said, “The plantation target for south Haryana also includes distribution of saplings to RWAs, schools and panchayats.”

This initiative seeks to enhance air quality in the city, which ranks among the most polluted cities according to IQAir, a Swiss company. The report by the Swiss firm indicates that the city’s PM 2.5 concentration increased by 11% in 2021 as compared to 2020.

It is important to note that the city is also losing its forest cover to accommodate urban clusters and infrastructure development.

The Forest Survey of India (FSI) reports that the city lost 2.47sqkm of forest cover between 2019 and 2020.

However, merely planting trees in large numbers without ensuring their survival is unlikely to effectively address the problem in the region, where the survival rate of saplings is only around 10 to 20%.

Environmentalists emphasise that conducting mass plantation drives every monsoon is insufficient, and the region requires an audit of plantation drives and the regeneration of indigenous species to improve biodiversity.

“There is a need to carry out an audit every year on the number of plants/trees that survived after these drives. We have no idea how many plants have survived since the drive started three years back,” said Vaishali Rana Chandra, environmental activist. She also highlighted that trees in Gurgaon do not have the protection as in Delhi.

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