Mexico Leads the 'Green' Charge
 Agence France-Presse
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| | Mexican President Felipe Calderon (C) planting a Pino Azul (Blue pine). (AAP) |
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has announced his country planted nearly 250 million trees this year, one fourth of the world total the UN Environment Program (UNEP) had set to combat climate change.
"We're reaching the goal we set for ourselves that seemed so difficult to reach, of planting 250 million trees in Mexico," Calderon told reporters as he planted a pine tree in the grounds of his official Los Pinos home in Mexico City.
Calderon, who in February joined the UNEP's tree-planting program, said his government invested $US540 million ($A624 million) in the reforestation program.
"We used public funds to pay forest and jungle dwellers, most of them from indigenous communities and among the poorest people in Mexico," to plant trees, said the president, who has made sustainable development one of his top priorities.
The country's prodigious effort, however, was criticized by Greenpeace in Mexico spokeswoman Cecilia Navarro, who told reporters the reforestation program was carried out "helter skelter".
The trees, she said, "are being planted anywhere," not necessarily where they are appropriate and not necessarily near communities tasked with monitoring their growth.
The reforestation program, she added, does not offset rampant deforestation in Mexico, where "each year we lose at least 600,000 hectares of forest," the fifth-fastest deforestation rate in the world.
UNEP in November announced its year-long, worldwide reforestation program was a success, with 1.4 billion trees planted and Ethiopia (700 million), Mexico, Turkey, Kenya, Cuba, Rwanda, South Korea, Tunisia, Morocco and Burma the top 10 planters. |
Vallarta Weddings
Editorials | Environmental | December 2007 
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