Punjab Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal has exhorted citizens to launch a vigorous campaign for ushering in an ‘Evergreen Revolution’ by planting more trees to make the nation clean, green and pollution free.
He said this at the inauguration of a national stakeholders meet on trees outside forests and wood-based enterprise organised at the Forest Research Institute (FRI) to commemorate 150 years of scientific forestry in India.
Stressing on the need for raising public awareness about the importance of trees, Badal said that said that the Punjab Government was determined to enhance the area under agro-forestry from existing 6.3 to 15 per cent in the coming years with the support of the FRI. Agro-farm forestry is essential at a time when Punjab’s traditional agriculture has already reached a point of saturation, he said.
The Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) director general Dr Ashwani Kumar expressed confidence that the workshop on trees outside the forest would pave the way for sensitising all the stakeholders to adopt the emerging innovations and best practices in agro-farm forestry.
The objective of this meet was to provide a platform to different stakeholders to share experience and highlight issues pertaining to short rotation tree-farming practices, wood use by industries and emerging wood use technologies. Trees outside forests play an important role in meeting the industrial requirement of wood, enhancing agricultural income, and helping conservation of natural forests. Trees outside forests already form a significant proportion of the country’s tree cover and are contributing in carbon sequestration and in mitigation of the climate change impacts.