Overview

In India, numerous tree plantation drives are held every year. From schools to corporations, everyone participates in tree plantation drives because they recognise that the country is losing its green cover. Planting more trees is the only sustainable way to restore the country’s pasturelands while boosting green cover.

Despite countless tree plantation drives being held every year, nothing seems to improve on the ground. At Manav Vikas Sanstha (MVS India), positioned among the top environmental NGOs in India, we’ve identified that the real reason for the failure of tree-planting initiatives is the lack of community participation.

As long as the local community isn’t made a key part of such tree plantation drives, nothing tangible will manifest. Hence, we’ve created a unique project to develop pastureland through sustainable tree plantations. We’ve shared all the key details in this blog post, so ensure you read the full write-up.

Why Are Most Tree Plantation Initiatives Failing?

If you closely monitor all the tree plantation initiatives that failed on the ground, you’ll find that all of them were designed around execution. The initiative’s core focus was on the number of trees to be planted, planting saplings in all selected locations, and adhering to a strict timeline. Very little thought was given to what happens after the plantation.

People didn’t factor in –

• Who will water the plants in peak summer?
• Who will protect them from grazing animals?
• Who ensures the land isn’t reused or disturbed?
• Who will remove weeds from the surrounding areas to ensure plants grow steadily?

These are a few important questions that were not considered in the design of most tree plantation initiatives. Naturally, those initiatives failed.

Unless the projects include appropriate post-plantation measures involving the local community, the tree plantation initiatives will continue to fail.

Community Participation: The Backbone of Successful Tree Plantation Initiatives

If you’re still unsure why community participation is needed for successful tree plantation drives, the following points will clear your doubts:

• Trees need years of care that only locals can provide

You can plant a tree in a day, but you’ll have to take care of it for at least 2-3 years to ensure it grows properly. It is where most plantation drives fail. They don’t pay attention to the post-plantation measures. However, including the local community can ease this challenge.

Since they live nearby, they can regularly water the plants, remove weeds, prevent grazing animals from eating the tiny plants, and monitor regularly to ensure healthy growth. Hence, as a part of our project, we involve local communities in plantation activities so they can naturally develop a sense of plant ownership and responsibility towards the environment.

• Local communities know the land better

Local communities have usually lived in their native places for generations, so they’re well aware of their surroundings. They know which slopes are too rocky, which patches flood during the rainy season, and which native plant species always thrive in the soil. Hence, we collaborate with local communities to select the appropriate tree species. This collaboration significantly reduces the risk of failure.

• Without community buy-in, plantations can actually hurt local people

This is the part that rarely gets discussed. In many rural areas, land designated for plantation drives is also the land communities currently use for animal grazing, fuelwood, or seasonal farming. Hence, planting any trees without their consultation and involvement can threaten their livelihood. When this happens, locals will push back, and the plantation efforts will gradually fail.

Sustainable Development of Pasture Land through Tree Plantation

At Manav Vikas Sanstha (MVS India), one of the top 10 NGOs in Jaipur, Rajasthan, we wanted to help restore ecological balance sustainably. Hence, we launched a project to develop pastureland through tree-planting initiatives. As a part of this project, we teamed up with local communities to:

• Identify suitable areas for carrying out tree plantation drives
• Select native tree species that can grow well in the local climate
• Organise plantation drives involving local residents, schools, and our volunteers

To ensure our tree plantation initiatives fetch the intended results, we also created a maintenance community comprising the local people. The maintenance community was given the responsibility for timely watering the plant, weeding the fields, and closely monitoring sapling growth for the first three years.

Tangible Results Require Strategic, Sustained Efforts

We were very clear from the outset that we won’t be able to achieve the desired results if we fail to get active community participation. Hence, community mobilisation became one of our key consideration points.

We began with engaging local communities through awareness campaigns and training workshops that emphasised the importance of tree planting and environmental conservation. We also helped form active working committees in villages that would take care of the plantation efforts and ensure sustainable management.

Besides this, we also focused on establishing a tech-enabled monitoring system, comprising GPS technology to track tree growth and survival rates. This helps a lot in keeping us informed about the real-time progress of the initiative.

Our project also provided training to local community members on tree-planting techniques, nursery management, and sustainable forestry practices to generate employment opportunities. Collectively, all of this contributed to the success of our tree plantation initiatives.

Aligning Tree Plantation Initiatives with CSR Projects

We at Manav Vikas Sanstha (MVS India) partnered with Konica Minolta to establish check dams in Uttar Pradesh’s Shravasti district. This check dam was built to address water scarcity in Motipur and Gabbapur Kalan villages in the Shravasti district.

Locals can use this water resource to ensure that all newly planted trees are regularly watered, even during peak summer months.

The result is saplings growing into flourishing trees, restoring the local green cover.

Conclusion

Tree planting is often measured in numbers. However, we at Manav Vikas Sanstha (MVS India), one of the top environmental NGOs in India, firmly believe that success can never be only about numbers. You can plant 1,000 trees within a week, but it’ll be meaningless if they fall due to a lack of proper care within a few weeks or months. This gap is precisely what we’ve addressed through our tree-planting project.

If you also want to help restore green cover, you can volunteer with us or donate to our project. You can also collaborate with us on your CSR projects that align with this theme. To connect, you can email us at hello@mvsindia.org or call us at +91 8955009377/ +91 9549127666.