Sponsors and Partners:

Ekjut

Project Duration:
India_cuttingwood_web

Project Overview

India

Landowners & The Land:

We are working with a consortium of several thousand tribal villages in eastern India. These forests include subtropical dry and wet forests with rapid tree growth rates. Centuries of urban development and intensive agriculture have resulted in loss of forest cover, poor water quality in streams and rivers, and loss of biological diversity. Agricultural demands still exist as the majority of land in this region is still the dominant driver of community livelihood.

Ekjut developed a social program to help communities improve women’s health and reduce child injuries resulting from women taking their children with them to labor in the field. Ekjut introduced a child-care system across tens of thousands of villages that has significantly improved health and reduced injuries and mortality of children. Working with these same communities, we are working to build an environmental program focused on planting trees to increase forest health, livelihood options for communities, and improving quantity and quality of fresh water.

The Restoration:

We are working to establish several thousand community tree planting projects. A youth corp is developing tree planting projects through a participatory process with communities. If each of over 10,000 villages plants just 1,000 trees, we can quickly scale to 10,000,000 trees planted per year.