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REFORESTATION HELPS REVITALIZE CRISIS-STRICKEN ARMENIA
by Jennifer Hattam
Treehugger
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/09/reforestation-helps-revitalize-crisis-stricken-armenia.php
Sept 10 2010
The series of calamities -- a massive earthquake, energy shortages,
and military conflict -- that hit the small Caucasus nation of Armenia
in the late 1980s left much of its population uprooted and unemployed,
and its environment impoverished as well. At the current rate of
deforestation, the country could be a desert within 20 to 50 years,
according to the Armenia Tree Project, which has been working to
rebuild and revitalize the nation and its people, one seedling at
a time.
Villagers uprooted during the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan
are among the beneficiaries of the group's environmental efforts. In
the Getik River Valley, families that had to abandon the fields
they'd tended for decades are reestablishing their lives with the
help of the group's Backyard Nursery Micro-Enterprise Program, in
which villagers in the area grow seedlings in their yards and sell
them to the organization when they are ready to be planted in the
forest. Many have doubled their annual income as a result:
Thirty-nine-year-old Vatchakan Tsakanyan... lives with his sister
and her two kids, as well as his wife and their four children. The
tree seeds they received from Armenia Tree Project are cared for
by Vatchakan's sister, 35-year-old Nvart, who fills buckets from
the nearby Getik River a few times a day and carries them to water
the plants.
Though it's hard work, Nvart and Vatchakan are happy to use part of
their land to raise tree seedlings for ATP. With the money they will
receive from ATP for their backyard tree nursery, Vatchakan and Nvart
hope to increase their three beehives to 15.... [and] earn a bit of
an income from the sale of honey.
A successfully re-greened park in Armenia. Photo via the Armenia
Tree Project.
Since its founding in 1994, the Armenia Tree Project has planted
and restored more than 3,500,000 trees at over 800 sites around the
country and created hundreds of jobs in tree-regeneration programs.
The need is dire: Dependence on wood for cooking and heating has
reduced the amount of forest cover from a healthy 25 percent at the
beginning of the 1900s to less than 8 percent today, causing flooding,
erosion, and landslides that have destroyed homes and arable land.
In addition to planting trees, the group is designing environmental
education programs for the country's schools and providing sustainable
forestry training for adults in partnership with Yale University's
Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry. It also provides fruit
and nut trees to people in urban areas and hopes to eventually win
national protection for forests as wilderness sanctuaries. "In many
ways," NatGeo News Watch wrote in a blog post about the group's work,
"the effort to restore trees to Armenia is a restoration of the
nation's vitality."
From: A. Papazian
by Jennifer Hattam
Treehugger
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/09/reforestation-helps-revitalize-crisis-stricken-armenia.php
Sept 10 2010
The series of calamities -- a massive earthquake, energy shortages,
and military conflict -- that hit the small Caucasus nation of Armenia
in the late 1980s left much of its population uprooted and unemployed,
and its environment impoverished as well. At the current rate of
deforestation, the country could be a desert within 20 to 50 years,
according to the Armenia Tree Project, which has been working to
rebuild and revitalize the nation and its people, one seedling at
a time.
Villagers uprooted during the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan
are among the beneficiaries of the group's environmental efforts. In
the Getik River Valley, families that had to abandon the fields
they'd tended for decades are reestablishing their lives with the
help of the group's Backyard Nursery Micro-Enterprise Program, in
which villagers in the area grow seedlings in their yards and sell
them to the organization when they are ready to be planted in the
forest. Many have doubled their annual income as a result:
Thirty-nine-year-old Vatchakan Tsakanyan... lives with his sister
and her two kids, as well as his wife and their four children. The
tree seeds they received from Armenia Tree Project are cared for
by Vatchakan's sister, 35-year-old Nvart, who fills buckets from
the nearby Getik River a few times a day and carries them to water
the plants.
Though it's hard work, Nvart and Vatchakan are happy to use part of
their land to raise tree seedlings for ATP. With the money they will
receive from ATP for their backyard tree nursery, Vatchakan and Nvart
hope to increase their three beehives to 15.... [and] earn a bit of
an income from the sale of honey.
A successfully re-greened park in Armenia. Photo via the Armenia
Tree Project.
Since its founding in 1994, the Armenia Tree Project has planted
and restored more than 3,500,000 trees at over 800 sites around the
country and created hundreds of jobs in tree-regeneration programs.
The need is dire: Dependence on wood for cooking and heating has
reduced the amount of forest cover from a healthy 25 percent at the
beginning of the 1900s to less than 8 percent today, causing flooding,
erosion, and landslides that have destroyed homes and arable land.
In addition to planting trees, the group is designing environmental
education programs for the country's schools and providing sustainable
forestry training for adults in partnership with Yale University's
Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry. It also provides fruit
and nut trees to people in urban areas and hopes to eventually win
national protection for forests as wilderness sanctuaries. "In many
ways," NatGeo News Watch wrote in a blog post about the group's work,
"the effort to restore trees to Armenia is a restoration of the
nation's vitality."
From: A. Papazian