EcoSikh's drive to set up 450 mini-forests begins in Amritsar

Amritsar, June 29

Kicking off its plantation drive for setting up 450 mini-forests dedicated to Guru Nanak Dev, the EcoSikh in collaboration with several religious and social organisations in the city held a special ceremony at Dreamcity.

The initiative was announced recently as a five-year campaign to celebrate the 445th foundation day of Amritsar. The campaign — Eco Amritsar 450 — will culminate on the 450th anniversary of its founding in 2027.

Mayor Karamjit Singh Rintu along with other eminent members of the civil society attended the ceremony.

“The fact that the city has been ripped off its green cover due to BRTS and during the course of developing prime real estate has brought us to the day where we have alarming levels of air pollution in the city. With less than 1 per cent of green wealth left, Amritsar needs to replant and revive its tree numbers if we want to leave some sense of nature for our future generations,” said Indu Arora, member of the district environment monitoring committee and local activist.

Recently, the Chief Khalsa Diwan too had announced to create mini-forests in all its institutions as part of establishing Guru Nanak’s sacred forests. “The city gets over one lakh tourist footfall on daily basis and deteriorating environment conditions have added to the burden of natural resources. In an effort to conserve and preserve the green wealth of the city that was founded as the centre of spiritual and cultural epicentre of Punjab is a gift to future generation,” said Rajwant Singh, global president of EcoSikh.