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Tree planting programme: Gearing to set Guinness record  

25 Apr 2021

  • Planting a tree in every house  

  This year's Sinhalese and Tamil New Year celebration welcomed the new tradition courtesy of the Ministry of Environment – a nationwide tree planting initiative. Minister of Environment Mahinda Amaraweera inaugurated the new tradition by planting a sapling during an auspicious time on 16 April, and also announced his plans to further improve this tradition in 2022.  During the event, the Minister told the media that he plans to plant more saplings in the following year, and potentially break the Guinness World Record.   Speaking to The Sunday Morning, he explained that this year around, one million trees were planted during the auspicious time, 6.40 a.m., following which the Ministry set a target of planting four million trees during the 2022 Sinhalese and Tamil New Year. Planting this many saplings at the same time may result in the breaking of the world record for tree planting in such a short time period.   However, Amaraweera stated that the main goal of this new tradition is not to break a world record, but to get every household in Sri Lanka to plant a tree in their premises and help the environment.   “This year we recorded around a million trees being planted for the new year, so we have decided to step it up and plant four million trees on the same day, at the same time. I think we will break the world record, but it is not our main focus; we want to do things that benefit the environment.”  Ministry of Environment Secretary Dr. Anil Jasinghe stated that this is one of several tree planting initiatives put forth by the Ministry. Other initiatives include the “Surakimu Ganga” initiative which aims at conserving Sri Lanka’s riverbanks, with one strategy being to plant more trees along the river banks. Another initiative is a tree planting scheme for schoolchildren, conducted by the Central Environmental Authority (CEA).  He explained that while the Ministry of Environment does not have an official mandate to plant trees or a certain number of trees to plant throughout the year, the Ministry has introduced these initiatives and are aiding other privately done initiatives.  “Unlike the Ministry of Wildlife and Forest Conservation, we do not have a certain number of trees to plant each year. But we do aid corporates, NGOs (non-governmental organisations), and local scouts carry out their tree planting initiatives. Our Ministry even has a Biodiversity Division which published an inventory for where these private organisations can find plant nurseries to obtain saplings and which species are available to them.”  Speaking to us on the initiative, environmentalist Jayantha Wijesinghe stated that this was a good project and was necessary. However, he pointed out that the Government's first priority should not be tree planting, and instead should be preventing Sri Lanka's declining forest cover.  According to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), an estimated 70% of the island was covered with forests at the beginning of the 19th Century, which has since reduced to 29.7%, 1.95 million hectares, in 2017. More recent reports suggest that in 2020, the forest cover has further reduced to 28.39%, 1.86 million hectares, of the entire land area.   Wijesinghe stated that the Government’s main focus should be to protect Sri Lanka’s existing forest cover and existing ecosystems, and leave the tree planting to corporates and the citizens. Secondly, he stated that the Government should look at reforesting rather than tree planting in urban areas, similar to what was done in South Korea, which led to a 12% increase in the country’s forest cover.   “While this was a good move, in my opinion, the Government should focus more on recreating our forests and not planting trees in every household.”  He pointed out that over the last few decades several similar initiatives have been taken and millions of trees planted. He went on to state that if these initiatives were sustainable, the country would be covered in forests; however, they are not practically sustainable due to the Government not being able to track each tree that is planted.   Seeing this need for reforesting, the Government also launched another tree planting programme on 16 April, at the same time as the Ministry of Environment's programme, in order to plant two million saplings in four years with the aim of increasing the country’s forest density and forest cover. Themed “Surakumata Parisaraya”, the programme commenced with the planting of saplings on a six-acre land in the Boys’ Town area in Ragama, in the presence of State Minister of Rural Roads and Other Infrastructure Nimal Lanza.  Following the manifesto presented by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the programme was implemented by Minister of Highways Johnston Fernando under the guidance of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and on the instructions of Presidential Task Force on Economic Revival and Poverty Alleviation Chairman Basil Rajapaksa.  The programme plans to also plant endemic and eco-friendly plants that are indigenous to each area, and arrangements have been made to plant 500,000 saplings in the year 2021.   


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