Kerala villagers are reaping the benefits of a scheme that pays them to leave their trees rooted, reducing risk of deforestation, and could enable their towns and villages to become carbon neutral.
In the hilly terrain of Wayanad, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the people with any access to land in the quiet town of Meenangadi have been out counting their trees.
Sheeja CG, a 46-year-old farmer, has lived among coffee, coconut and pepper plantations all her life but last month she increased her income dramatically by mortgaging 53 of her trees at the local bank, in return for a sum of 2,650 rupees (£26.96), or 50 rupees each. She was one of the first beneficiaries of the state-sponsored scheme.
It’s a simple incentive with big gains: plant a tree, and after three years residents can mortgage each sapling for an interest-free loan that can be renewed annually for 10 years. The money need be repaid only if the tree is chopped down.
Kerala, with its sweeping, spice-filled forested landscape has been troubled in recent years by an ailing farming sector as farmers have been compelled to fell trees to supplement their income, leading to a loss of biodiversity. Against such a background, the tree banking project, facilitated by a 10 crores rupee (£1m / $1.35) grant from the state government, comes as a big incentive to keep them rooted to the ground.
The tree banking scheme has an ambition to reverse the damage and turn Meenangadi, a town of about 35,000 people into a carbon neutral region. The Carbon Neutral Meenangadi Project is the first of its kind in India, and has swiftly and successfully changed the way the community lives and works. It's expected that this innovative idea will be rolled out to other places in India shortly.
Drones Planting Trees: Amazingly, one can currently plant 10,000 seed pods a day, and hopes to reach 100,000 a day. By hand, someone might typically be able to plant around 1,500 trees in a day. Planting a vast number of new trees is a necessary step in fighting climate change (though not remotely the only one). Some plans call for as many as a trillion new trees, but planting trees takes time. To speed the process, many drone-based tree planting companies are starting up. More...