The 1:20 Green Earth Initiative

 The Twenty-twenty Tree Initiative

The Twenty-twenty Tree Initiative

Since its inception around seven years ago, this blog has discussed several spiritual concepts as well as ideas that attempt to contribute towards improving the quality of life on our wondrous planet. Some of these ideas have caught the fancy of many on far off shores including a 1:10 initiative that has been taken up by the Europeans enthusiastically after appropriate modifications. This particular initiative had seeded the idea of linking maximum salaries of executives in any organization to the minimum salary within the same organization. Encouraged by such responses, this blogger is encouraged now to put forth a new idea that is not concerned directly with economy but rather with the health and beauty of our lovely planet. It is called the 1:20 Green earth Initiative here, or one may call it the Twenty-Twenty Tree Initiative.

Very simply put the idea is that it may be prescribed by law that every person who possesses or controls land of one acre or more shall ensure that he or she plants a least twenty trees per acre on his land. This law, wherever implemented in a region, province or country would apply to all individual land owners as well as organizations such as farms, homes, schools, universities, industries, trusts etc. if they own or control a piece of land of one acre or more through lease or grant. Actually a far larger number of trees can be planted on an acre of land. This law merely prescribes the minimum. In his home this author presently has more than twenty trees and a home on less than one tenth of an acre and there is a driveway and two lawns besides.

While many initiatives are afoot around the planet to increase tree cover such initiatives have lagged behind the deforestation that has been taking place on the planet over the last century. The present initiative would add oomph to such attempts and help improve climate stabilization efforts. The law briefly put would be something as follows:

Every person or organization that possesses an acre or more of land shall ensure that at least twenty trees of a height of at least ten feet from the ground grow on this land. Those following short of this prescribed minimum shall pay an annual tree deficit tax proportional to the number of trees that are short of twenty. In the first five years after this act is promulgated the height of the counted tree may be less than ten feet.

It is not necessary that the trees be distributed evenly on land. Thus a farmer with a ten acre lot can plant an orchard of 200 fruit trees in a corner of his farm to satisfy the requirement. The location of trees and the choice of trees is up to the owner and farmers may prefer timber or fruit trees. Incase they wish to harvest the timber at some later stage they may, provided they have planted or otherwise have more than twenty trees to begin with on their land. Some thought has to be given to the appropriate and simple implementation of this law because a law that is not implemented is only a piece of paper. An easy implementation is possible through a voluntary counting and submission of number of trees on their plot in January of every year. They should retain a receipt of this submission because if a surprise random check is made and the submission found to be incorrect there would be a penalty. Half the penalty would be a reward for the person who reports them. Certainly there would be several details of this law that would need to be worked out but that can be done quickly by a group of experts assembled for the purpose, once the idea is accepted. This blogger shall volunteer to be a part of such a group, if necessary, if called to do so by any region within feasible traveling distance.

This blogger was encouraged to publish the present article after listening to a prominent political leader of India Shri Narendra Modi who brought out the importance of farmers planting more trees for economic benefits in a keynote address televised on National TV in India yesterday. He is currently the chief Minster of a large progressive province/state of India- Gujarat. It is the intention of this blogger to communicate the link of this article to him. In case this initiative begins with this province it would be a fitting tribute to human civilization everywhere because as revealed by archeological evidence and ancient history, the southern coastal region of this province may well have been the originator of settled human civilization on the planet. It has been postulated that civilization spread from this southern end of the Indus civilization first toward Sumerians and then Egypt before reaching Athens and then Rome. Articles on this can be found in a companion blog by this author at http://alienaccount.blogspot.com

An extended version of this article along with extensions for smaller urban plots is here http://ashokmalhotra.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/the-twenty-twenty-tree-initiative/

More on trees in this blog here:
http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/search?q=trees