Context:
- A Union Minister marked the five-year completion of the “One Plant Per Day” resolution, transforming a personal environmental pledge into a wider public environmental movement.
Key Highlights:
About the Initiative
- The One Plant Per Day Resolution was initiated in 2021 by Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
- It involves a daily commitment to plant at least one tree, encouraging individuals to adopt continuous environmental responsibility.
- The initiative aims to convert individual action into a mass environmental movement.
Institutional Framework
- Implemented with support from:
- Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare
- Ministry of Rural Development
Key Features
- Daily Plantation Commitment
- Encourages individuals and communities to plant one sapling every day.
- Institutional Integration
- Agricultural institutions and government programmes are encouraged to begin events with tree plantation activities.
- Digital Participation Platforms
- Platforms such as Ankur allow citizens to:
- Register plantation activities
- Track planted trees digitally.
- Tree Bank Concept
- A proposed system where citizens can sponsor or plant trees, creating a digitally monitored green asset base.
Significance
- Mass Environmental Awareness
- Converts personal environmental responsibility into collective action.
- Afforestation and Ecological Restoration
- Contributes to:
- Increasing green cover
- Biodiversity conservation
- Climate resilience
- Behavioural Change Model
- Encourages eco-friendly practices such as gifting trees instead of souvenirs or mementos.
- Climate Change Mitigation
- Tree plantation helps sequester carbon dioxide, supporting India’s climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Relevant Prelims Points:
- Afforestation: Planting trees in areas that previously had little or no forest cover.
- Reforestation: Replanting trees in deforested areas.
- India State of Forest Report (ISFR)
- Published by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) every two years.
- Provides data on forest and tree cover in India.
- Key National Afforestation Initiatives
- National Afforestation Programme (NAP)
- Green India Mission
- Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)
- India’s Climate Commitments
- Target to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent through forests and tree cover by 2030.
Relevant Mains Points:
- Role of Community Participation in Environmental Governance
- Environmental programmes are more effective when citizens actively participate in implementation.
- The initiative demonstrates the importance of bottom-up environmental governance.
- Afforestation as a Climate Strategy
- Tree plantation contributes to:
- Carbon sequestration
- Soil conservation
- Water retention
- Biodiversity protection
- Behavioural Change in Environmental Policy
- Sustainable environmental protection requires social behavioural change, not just regulations.
- Challenges
- Tree plantation initiatives often face issues such as:
- Low survival rate of saplings
- Lack of long-term monitoring
- Planting of non-native species
- Need for Ecological Planning
- Afforestation should prioritise native species, ecological restoration, and biodiversity conservation, rather than mere plantation numbers.
Way Forward
- Promote Native Species Plantation
- Focus on region-specific indigenous trees.
- Strengthen Monitoring Mechanisms
- Use digital platforms and GIS tracking to monitor survival rates of saplings.
- Community-Based Forestry
- Involve local communities, self-help groups, and panchayats.
- Integration with Climate Policy
- Align plantation initiatives with India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
UPSC Relevance:
- GS Paper III: Environment, climate change mitigation, afforestation policies.
- GS Paper II: Governance and citizen participation in public initiatives.