Trees can have a huge impact on climate change, both locally and globally. By helping students at schools in southern India plant and nurture trees, we will not only enlist the power of trees to mitigate climate change but educate the next generation about the importance of increasing green cover. The trees they plant will have an immediate impact, while the seeds we plant in their young minds will bear fruit long into the future.
India is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Because so many of its people, especially the poor, depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, even a slight increase in temperature or decrease in rainfall can have devastating effects. In the cities, global warming can make life almost unbearable, especially for the homeless.
We will teach school children about how all trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and how trees like neem have the capacity to further purify air; how pungai & banyan can create marvelously cooling environments; how palms can store water; and how moringa can purify water, shade crops, and provide supernutrients. Each child will select the type of tree they would like to grow, learn how to nurture it, and calculate how much carbon it will likely sequester over the next ten years.
The Government Higher Secondary School in Siruganur village is the first of 155 schools we are planning to engage with. By evaluating which tree varieties and growing techniques produce the hardiest trees we will improve the project's impact with each school. Over time, the trees we plant will sequester thousands of tons of carbon, and the children who grow them will, we hope, move on to effect even greater changes in the environment long into the future.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
