Telangana Fights Climate Change Through Forest Conservation

Conservation and ecologically sustainable development can be the only way to make the planet live-able for the future generations. With this as the vision and given the importance of environment and preserving biodiversity, Telangana embarked on an ambitious plan to mitigate the impact of climate change. The state adopted innovative, inclusive green practices and initiated some laudable schemes that helped increase the forest cover from 24 per cent to 33 per cent. Here are the details of some green schemes adopted by the state: 

Haritha Haram: Telangana's Haritha Haram is considered the third-largest afforestation programme in human history. The programme's sole objective is to increase the state's green cover 

Palle Pragathi and Pattana Pragathi are some other unique participative schemes that adopt an approach of integrated development of villages and urban areas of the state. 

Along with the schemes, to increase green cover in all 12,769 gram panchayats of the state, mini-park–cum-forests (Prukriti Vanams) are being developed in each of the village. Moreover, the government has recently decided to develop Bruhat Palle Prikriti Vanam (BPPV) in all the 540 mandals of the state. Government has also identified 109 locations across the state for developing urban parks covering 30,377 hectares. Solar Power is also being substantially augmented to add green energy. 

Because of these effective schemes, today the state ranks No 2 in SARAL - State Rooftop Attractiveness Index and No 4 in total solar power production. 100 megawatt floating solar plant in Ramagundam that will produce Green Methanol is another notable initiative. Electric mobility is another grand initiative to minimise the impact of carbon emissions in the state. 

Investments from Suzlon, Amara Raja, GreenKO , RenewPower in green energy is a testament of the state government's policy push to tackle climate change. Apart from all this, seed bombing, geo tagging of trees are some of the other green initiatives, being pushed by the government. Telangana today has achieved a record of planting more than 80 billion trees