The Haritha Haram programme, one of the flagship programmes of Telangana state proved a great success. It helped increase the forest cover by 632 square kilometres and ranked second in the country.
The India State of Forest Report 2021 was released by the Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change change Mr Bhupender Yadav.
Among the megacities that witnessed an increase in greenery, Hyderabad city ranked first with a forest growth of 48.66 square kilometres.
The Haritha Haram programme was launched by the TRS government in 2015 aiming at raising 230 crore saplings. As of November 2021, a total of 239.441 crore saplings were planted. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had set u a dedicated fund for `Telangana Ku Haritha Nidhi’ as part of the programme.
Now the Telangana state has a total of 24,125.35 square kilometres of greenery in all categories such as dense forest, medium dense, outside forest and bushes.
According to senior IFS officer, Mohan Chandra Parigeyan of the Union Environment department, the efforts of Telangana government were fruitful as they increased greenery in 63,200 hectares and top among the five states in the country. Hyderabad witnessed growth in greenery in 4,866 hectares ranking first among the megacities in India, he said.
The Telangana state according to 2019 study between 2015 and 2021, the Telangana forest cover is 26,969 square kilometres that accounting for 21.47 per cent of its geography.
The Haritha Haram programme contributed to the growth of forest cover from 2015-2017, to an extent of 565 square kilometres spread over 16,300 hectares of forest cover.
Forest tree cover in India is now 8,09,537 square kilometres that is 24.62 per cent of the country’s geographical area.
-Gollapudi Srinivasa Rao