Noting that national capital’s green cover has increased by 2,500 hectares, or 21.88% of the entire surface area, Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai said 1.1 million additional trees are going to be planted within the city.
Addressing the maintain Tuesday, Rai said the Delhi government also will organise a “wildlife conservation awareness campaign” at Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary from October 2.
“To curb pollution in Delhi, tree plantation drives are great contributors. The balance which trees create within the environment is being restored by the Delhi government aggressively. Today (Tuesday) we held a gathering with the high-ranking officials of the forest department within which we noted that 2,232,000 of our target of planting 3.3 million trees has been achieved,” said Rai.
He added, “We started functioning on this pledge from right from Van Mahotsav and have achieved such a lot of this target already. We are attending to plant of these trees by March 2022 and it absolutely was stated within the report which came up within the meeting today (Tuesday).”
Rai said that “when the fight against pollution was started by the Arvind Kejriwal government in 2015-16”, 1,651,000 trees were planted, followed by 2,475,000 trees in 2016-17; 1,600,000 trees in in 2017-18; 2,895,000 trees in 2018-19; and a couple of,870,000 trees in 2019-20.
“The forest survey of India has mentioned two categories of terrain for the aim of green cover — first is hilly and therefore the second is plains. The forest survey of India says that the hilly areas should have a minimum of 60% of their land under green cover and also the planes should have a minimum of 20%. In 2019 itself, the report by the FSI stated that Delhi had 21.88% of its area under the green belt. In 2015, the overall area of Delhi was 1,483 sq kilometres. Out of this, 325 sq. kilometre green belt (amounting to 21.88% of the area) was developed in Delhi over the years,” he said.
He further said that the govt. will think about wildlife protection.
“From October 2 to eight, we are going to hold a Van Jeev Samrakshan Abhiyan programme at the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary. Activities are going to be administrated to sensitise people. We are committed to preserving the environment,” he said.
