This was on a Sunday in July and it was a noble task undertaken, but to keep Goa green, retaining if not increasing the tree cover it had in the past, it will take more than such infrequent drives. It will need the authorities and the people working together to raise the area under the green cover in the State and not just sporadic projects, but the saplings planted during the Van Mahotsav period should be tended throughout the year so that they grow into the trees they are meant to be.
Rather importantly, the saplings being planted must be varieties that are indigenous to the land, and not ornamental trees. Goa is learning the hard way that its labours of the past in planting certain varieties of trees has gone wrong. In fact, Goa’s efforts at reforestation could be termed downright ridiculous. Just recently it was announced that the tree cover in the forest lands of Goa was made up of not indigenous tree species, but of Australian accacia trees that are just not native to the State. These were planted in mining pits, but over the years spread elsewhere and extended the land on which they have grown.
How did this happen? What made the Forest Department grow such a variety of trees in the forests of Goa? As per an admission of the government, the accacia and eucalyptus trees have no water absorbing capacity but have increased manifold and spread across the forests, suppressing the growth of other trees. They are also of no benefit to the wild animals as they provide no food to them.
The forests of Goa cannot have just any variety of trees. They have to be native to the land, trees that will help the survival of the animal kingdom, is increasing the green cover and contributing towards arresting the climate change. There is a plan to phase out the accacia trees and replace them with local varieties – fruit bearing trees in particular – but this will take time, and won’t happen quickly. It’s a five-year plan at the moment. In the meantime, the man-animal conflicts that have already occurred will increase, as the animals begin to stray from their natural habitat in search of food.
But, there’s more that can be done. The Green Goa Initiative volunteers have shown that plantation drives can involve a lot of people, but there is an example in the USA that could help Goa is a bigger way. In California a coffee cup has been designed that is not only biodegradable but has native seeds embedded in it. Consumers of coffee are being encouraged to plant these cups or return them to the company to be planted. The uniqueness of this is that even when just thrown away, this coffee cup has the possibility of turning into a tree, as the seed if flung on suitable soil could sprout into a plant even without being planted into the ground. Here is an example of turning trash into trees, and hopefully it will catch on in the US and then in other countries.
Can Goa undertake a similar project? There is a lot of waste being generated by the people in the form of one-use cups and plates that are then dumped in landfills. If some of these could be converted into biodegradable plates and cups with seeds embedded in them, it would revolutinise the refrorestation plans of the State. That is something that the government or NGOs must consider, or perhaps entrepreneurs who can earn by creating such plate and cups.
