Ethiopian officials announced that the country had surpassed its goal and planted over 353 million trees in 12 hours. This massive project is done to tackle the effects of climate change. This is a well-intentioned action but will not be converted into a tangible impact. Why? Two reasons: Design Flaws and Corruption. This project is prone to corruption by design.
Is this the right intervention for the problem in the first place? The mass plantation approach for afforestation efforts seems to overlook previous afforestation issues by encouraging mass plantings to meet a national quota. Afforestation must be done by planning long-term duration and phase-wise distribution. The mass plantation drive is an event management and PR scenario form of intervention. The approach tackles neither development nor conservation goals without ensuring the long-term sustainability of the development or conservation impacts.
Each state like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, etc. has done these mass plantation drives a few years back. The previous Guinness World record for tree planting was held by India, wherein in 2017, volunteers in the country’s Uttar Pradesh planted nearly 50 million trees in one day. However, it had only proven to be a joke for various reasons. The Narmada Plantation Scam is a prime example of that. I will be sharing the major flaws in this approach below:
1. GIS Mapping: Implementing Geo-Tagging on a site-by-site basis can reduce corruption and help in monitoring the state of saplings. Such technological interventions aren't generally initiated for 12-hour marathons and are rarely shared in the public domain for scrutiny.
2. Saplings Logistics and Procurement: The tree plantation drive is a lottery for these departments to earn money. The modus operandi is the allocation of ambitious/infeasible targets for plantation drives to all government departments. The state nurseries don't have the capability to supply huge numbers of saplings for the drive. Private nurseries are hired to provide saplings of overpriced value. The kickbacks are built into the hiring and transportation process. The overpriced saplings don't fetch big margins for the private vendors. The big margin lies in the transportation drive to the chosen locations. The 'ghost trees' constitute a major part of corruption money in the whole program and can be found only in files of the government.
3. Accountability: The tree saplings can not survive without any government officials being responsible for conservation in the initial years. Such drives become a straight case of corruption. There aren't any impact assessment studies done to check the efficiency and effectiveness of the whole program. Reminding the government and citizens to follow through with the desired actions of any intervention is an essential step to helping people achieve their desired goals.
4. Sustainability: Trees are sustainability power tools but such a massive drive without a follow-up plan for the conservation of saplings leads to massive irregularities and a waste of public money. There is no plan to ensure their growth and protect them for at least three years. How many survived is an important indicator of success & not how many were planted.
5. BioDiversity: Such afforestation drives can introduce damaging non-native plant species having a destructive impact on land and causing adverse effects on flora & fauna. The massive nature of the approach neglects consideration of the local ecosystem and biodiversity. Growing Eucalyptus in low rainfall areas has caused adverse environmental impacts due to competition for water with other species and an increased incidence of allelopathy.
6. Mistimed Planting Season: The thumb rule of mass plantation in India is during Van Mahotsav, an annual one-week tree-planting festival in India. This is timed with the post-arrival of monsoon (15th June) and ease of digging land pits. There have been instances of plantation drives on 15th August on a massive scale that is both unscientific and an exercise in public relations.
There is quick deforestation happening in India and with its rapidly growing population, more farmland is being used, and unsustainable forest usage is on the rampage. Chopping and selling trees add to GDP but planting them doesn’t. 1.09 crore trees have been cut down for developmental work in the last 5 years across India. As a consequence, the global economy has a distorted perception of wealth.
Tree plantation drives have to be implemented in a decentralized manner through gram panchayats and local communities. Trees must be classified as public health infrastructures. The afforestation drive can' be left to such PR relations and need more brain with a political will for a good intervention.
Is this the right intervention for the problem in the first place? The mass plantation approach for afforestation efforts seems to overlook previous afforestation issues by encouraging mass plantings to meet a national quota. Afforestation must be done by planning long-term duration and phase-wise distribution. The mass plantation drive is an event management and PR scenario form of intervention. The approach tackles neither development nor conservation goals without ensuring the long-term sustainability of the development or conservation impacts.
Each state like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, etc. has done these mass plantation drives a few years back. The previous Guinness World record for tree planting was held by India, wherein in 2017, volunteers in the country’s Uttar Pradesh planted nearly 50 million trees in one day. However, it had only proven to be a joke for various reasons. The Narmada Plantation Scam is a prime example of that. I will be sharing the major flaws in this approach below:
1. GIS Mapping: Implementing Geo-Tagging on a site-by-site basis can reduce corruption and help in monitoring the state of saplings. Such technological interventions aren't generally initiated for 12-hour marathons and are rarely shared in the public domain for scrutiny.
2. Saplings Logistics and Procurement: The tree plantation drive is a lottery for these departments to earn money. The modus operandi is the allocation of ambitious/infeasible targets for plantation drives to all government departments. The state nurseries don't have the capability to supply huge numbers of saplings for the drive. Private nurseries are hired to provide saplings of overpriced value. The kickbacks are built into the hiring and transportation process. The overpriced saplings don't fetch big margins for the private vendors. The big margin lies in the transportation drive to the chosen locations. The 'ghost trees' constitute a major part of corruption money in the whole program and can be found only in files of the government.
3. Accountability: The tree saplings can not survive without any government officials being responsible for conservation in the initial years. Such drives become a straight case of corruption. There aren't any impact assessment studies done to check the efficiency and effectiveness of the whole program. Reminding the government and citizens to follow through with the desired actions of any intervention is an essential step to helping people achieve their desired goals.
4. Sustainability: Trees are sustainability power tools but such a massive drive without a follow-up plan for the conservation of saplings leads to massive irregularities and a waste of public money. There is no plan to ensure their growth and protect them for at least three years. How many survived is an important indicator of success & not how many were planted.
5. BioDiversity: Such afforestation drives can introduce damaging non-native plant species having a destructive impact on land and causing adverse effects on flora & fauna. The massive nature of the approach neglects consideration of the local ecosystem and biodiversity. Growing Eucalyptus in low rainfall areas has caused adverse environmental impacts due to competition for water with other species and an increased incidence of allelopathy.
6. Mistimed Planting Season: The thumb rule of mass plantation in India is during Van Mahotsav, an annual one-week tree-planting festival in India. This is timed with the post-arrival of monsoon (15th June) and ease of digging land pits. There have been instances of plantation drives on 15th August on a massive scale that is both unscientific and an exercise in public relations.
There is quick deforestation happening in India and with its rapidly growing population, more farmland is being used, and unsustainable forest usage is on the rampage. Chopping and selling trees add to GDP but planting them doesn’t. 1.09 crore trees have been cut down for developmental work in the last 5 years across India. As a consequence, the global economy has a distorted perception of wealth.
Tree plantation drives have to be implemented in a decentralized manner through gram panchayats and local communities. Trees must be classified as public health infrastructures. The afforestation drive can' be left to such PR relations and need more brain with a political will for a good intervention.
