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this journey in terms of experiences
started very early in my life because
I've always been outdoors and I have a
certain sense of land so my engagement
with this has been very long term but
action-orientedness came in the from
1998
on that year some U.N agencies came to
Tamil Nadu and made a prediction that by
2025 60 percent of Tamil Nadu will be
will be facing desertification
so when I looked at this I did not
believe it first of all so I decided to
drive around Tamil Nadu and see for
myself
then I saw what they were saying was
incorrect because in my experience I
felt it will happen well before 2025.
because three perennial Rivers had dried
up in Tamil Nadu when I saw this I
thought we need to do something so at
that time
the average green cover across Tamil not
over 16.5 percent the national
aspiration was 33 percent so I said we
need to get this to 33 percent what does
it take I made a simple Barefoot
calculation so I called a group of our
volunteers and said see we need to plant
114 million trees they thought I've gone
crazy
because that Guru 114 million trees who
can plant this
I asked what is your population they
said 62 million see if all of us plant
one tree
take care of it for two years and plant
one more tree you got the number
why is it that it can't be done simply
because all of us are consuming but all
of us are not willing to do the
compensatory work that's the whole thing
So based on this we started a moment
called project green hands which planted
millions of trees still continuing to do
that and we converted a few uh over 120
000 Farmers into tree based agriculture
where we saw a significant Improvement
in the soil quality in the nutritional
values of the food and above all for the
farmer it is an economic process because
in seven to eight years time his income
is going up anywhere between 300 to 800
percent is
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I planted almost 2 000 saplings of six
different varieties of high value Timber
trees in my Farmland in 15 to 20 years
down the line it will fetch me
about 8 to 10 crore Rupees income so my
future is fixed
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thing I am pushing for right now is we
must eliminate the term Forest produce
there is no such thing if you want
Timber you must grow it if you want
honey you must grow it whatever else you
need you must grow it on your
agricultural lands right now we are
importing over 70 000 crores worth of
Timber from various parts of the world
these 70 000 crores could go to our
farmers in the next 20 years if we start
plantations right now this does not mean
we give up farming we can grow almost
every crop this is what we have proven
in the last 22 years my work is to
officiate the marriage of economy and
ecology because if these two things
don't come together ecology will be
beaten based on this we launched the
next thing because I saw there were many
policy anomalies to plant trees in the
land
how this was affected is I drove from
kanyakumari to Himalayan region in 29
days covering 16 States at that time in
these 16 states there were six different
political parties we got absolute
participation from all those political
parties because there were
162 million people supporting the
movement we must understand in a
democracy there is only one currency
that is the numbers the people I gave
this policy document to the prime
minister at about 6 20 in the evening
next day before 11 o'clock just before
11 o'clock the PM book calls us and says
a special cell has been formed and they
want a soft copy within three and a half
months the Niti ayok made this a
recommendation policy for all the 28
States
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comes from people like you your power is
ideation
our power is multiplication that is what
we are doing so that is the story of
rally for reverse we knew that we had to
manifest something which is a
large-scale sample this is why we took
up kaveri calling kaveri because I grew
up around kaveri what it was 50 years
ago today it is only 40 percent of what
it was 50 years ago kaveri calling is an
active process there are nine districts
in Karnataka which cover kaveri Basin we
were working only in these nine
districts and in the month of August
September we had a you know like our
volunteers went down and did 1800 events
in about six weeks time 1800 events in
1800 panchayats looking at this now
Karnataka government just uh less than
two weeks ago sent an invite for us to
take this up in 31 districts that is all
the districts in Karnataka unccd looking
at the success of kaveri calling he is
right now projecting kaveri calling as
an ideal project in tropical world
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coffee calling could also be a
large-scale project that helps improve
the living conditions of the most
vulnerable populations while
rehabilitating the land that sustains
also all of us
to me you are the Incarnation of the
sustainable development goals because
while while there are 17 of them they're
all attend about these two people and
Planet uplift the people and protect the
planet and that's your mission so thank
you so much thank you very much so uh
pandemic is no way slowed us down the
dedication of our volunteers risking
their own personal health and well-being
they've been out there traveling doing
things
thank you
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this is of enormous significance for the
world to manifest that it's possible to
change the terrain of degraded Land by
taking Plan and strategized action
towards this so everybody be a part of
this and let's make this happen this is
our time on the planet we as a
generation of people have to show that
we can do positive things
let me know
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