World Environment Day: How Punekars turned a barren piece of land into a green forest
On this World Environment Day, here's a beautiful story of Pune's Varje. Once a village, Warje is now a sprawling Pune suburb that has 25 hectares of the green forest right in the middle of the Pune City limits and acts as a green lung for lakhs of Punekars residing in the region.
Pune has around 2200 hectares of forest land which were outside the city. However, after the expansion of the Pune, the forest lands have come within the city municipal limits. Warje city forest has 24 hectares of land, which has around 6,500 trees and over 1,000 people visit the place daily.
"Urban forests will work as urban lungs. I appeal to people to work together and make it a people's movement. We will reward people who participate and make it a success. Plant trees and increase their number as they are oxygen tanks," Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said.
During the virtual celebration of World Environment Day 2020, themed as 'Nature and Biodiversity', Javadekar launched the Nagar Van or Urban Forests with 200 corporations and cities across India while urging people to actively participate and increase the tree cover in their areas.
