Vedanta on a mission to grow 7 million trees by 2030

For the past hundred years, the progress of humanity has come at a significant cost to our environment. The 2022 State of the World's Forests reports take a hard look in the mirror, highlighting nature's perilous state worldwide. Forests across the globe constitute 31% of the world’s land surface (close to 4.06 billion hectares). However, that area is continually decreasing; deforestation has destroyed 420 million hectares of our forests in the last three decades alone. To have a thriving economy, we ought to have an ecosystem that's thriving too. In order to accomplish this, Vedanta has joined the World Economic Forum's 1 trillion tree movement to bring about positive climate change, and the company is proud to announce that it is the first corporate entity from South Asia to align with this cause.

1t.org, a platform for the trillion-tree community, is on a mission to conserve, restore, and grow a trillion trees by 2030. It works by mobilising the private sector and facilitating partnerships to reach its goal collectively. It’s an initiative by the World Economic Forum and was born to foster the UN decade (2021–2030) on ecosystem restoration. At the COP 27 summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, 1t.org announced how Vedanta is contributing to the movement with the pledge to grow 7 million trees by 2030.

Forests are critical to the health of our planet because they regulate global temperatures, freshwater and groundwater flow, support fertile soil, act as a flood barrier, and, most importantly, sequester carbon. The planet has already lost almost half of the trees that existed before agriculture started, and it’s severely destabilising the natural systems. Perhaps the only solution now is to conserve the trees we have, regrow the lost ones, and plant as much as we can, and that’s what the "1 trillion tree" movement is all about.

Reviving lost forests and conserving existing forest ecosystems has the potential to mitigate climate crisis and biodiversity loss. And at the same time, it will also help fulfil Vedanta’s ESG goals and contribute towards our goal to become a net zero carbon company by 2050. This collaboration provides just the right platform to drive our efforts towards restoring ecosystems around our operations and strengthening our commitment to creating a sustainable future. Vedanta’s actions in this pledge involve three key aspects: reforestation, agroforestry, and mangrove restoration. The biggest contributions in tree planting will come from the state of Rajasthan, where HZL and Cairn have pledged to plant over 3.5 million trees, followed by Odisha, where we’re aiming to grow over a million trees. Along with this, Vedanta will also be contributing to restoring biodiversity in South Africa. The entire progress is to be monitored by keeping track of the number of trees planted and the habitat restored. There will also be yearly updates on the number of saplings planted, their survival rates, and number of trees reaching maturity.

Vedanta has been working with organisations such as IUCN and ERM to assess, restore, and maintain ecosystems around our asset locations. All our operations have biodiversity management plans that are being revised to help reach Vedanta's strategic goal of making sure there is no net loss (NNL) and/or a net positive impact (NPI) on biodiversity in the areas where we operate.

An astounding revelation from the aforementioned report states that forests alone offset 662 billion tonnes of carbon, which stands for more than half of the global carbon stock our soils and vegetation hold. By collaborating with the 1 trillion tree movement, we embark on a journey that has the potential to not only restore ecosystems and habitats but also substantially reduce air pollution, minimise heat islands, act as water recharge zones, and sequester co2.