MEXICO

Mexico's Quarter of a Billion Tree Challenge
by Ron Mader

MEXICO FORUM
FOREST FORUM

Publication date: July 2007

PHOTO GALLERY: Oaxaca Trees
SLIDESHOW

Mexico is pledging to plant a quarter of a billion trees in 2007. Now that the rainy season has begun, reforestation projects are about to bloom.

A QUARTER OF A BILLION

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a major worldwide tree planting campaign. Under the Billion Tree Campaign, people, communities, business and industry, NGOs and governments are pledging tree planting commitments with the goal of planting at least one billion trees worldwide during 2007.

Mexico's President, Felipe Calderon, declared that his country would plant 250 million trees and the Mexican government launched the Pro Árbol (Pro Tree) Campaign, sponsored by the Chemistry Nobel Prize winner, Mario Molina.

The Mexican government will invest more than six billion pesos in 2007 with funds assigned to support nearly 400,000 inhabitants in ejidos and communities. The Pro-Árbol Program will be used to recover deforested areas amd recharge the aquifers. It will focus on four objectives: conservation and restoration, planning and forest organization, production and productivity, and the development of infrastructure, communication and other things required to contribute to sustainable forestry.

President Calderón explained that his government had signed an agreement with the United Nations, included in the Millennium Development Goals, pledging to incorporate the principles of sustainable development into national policies and programs and to reduce the loss of environmental resources.

The representative of the Mexican Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources and the Regional Director of UNEP/ROLAC signed an agreement in which the Mexican Government states its intention of joining the worldwide initiative, through reforestation campaigns and the incorporation of civil society and the private sector.

The 250 million trees pledged are indigenous to Mexico and include the following species: Acacia farnesiana, Agave atrovirens, Agave crupeata, Agave sp, Alnus sp, Brosimium alicastrum, Cedrela odorata, Cupresus lindleyi, Enterolobium cyclocarpum, Junglas piriformis, Junglas regia, Liquidambar macrophylla, Pinus arizonica, Pinus ayacahuite, Pinus cembroides, Pinus cooperi, Pinus chiapensis, Pinus devoniana, Pinus douglasiana, Pinus durangensis, Pinus engelmannii, Pinus gregii, Pinus hartwegii, Pinus jeffreyi, Pinus michoacana, Pinus montezumae, Pinus nelsoni, Pinus oaxacana, Pinus oocarpa, Pinus patula, Pinus pinceana, Pinus pseudostrobus, Pinus rudis, Pinus teocote, Pithecelobium paliens, Prosopis glandulosa, Prosopis laevigata, Prosopis velutina, Quercus sp, Quercus virens, Swietenia macrophylla and Yuca filifera.