We are in the age of modernization but at the same time we overlook certain pain that we give to our mother earth. Our Earth has been constantly trying to cope with the way in which human beings use natural resources, clear forest lands, cut trees, and contaminate the air, land, and water. Industrial revolution, population bursts, and pollution create permanent damage to the earth, and the result is global warming .We just forget how much important role our nature plays so it is very essential to take care of it instead of deforestation we should go for afforestation.
A forestation is the process of planting trees, or sowing seeds, in a barren land devoid of any trees to create a forest. The term should not be confused with reforestation, which is the process of specifically planting native trees into a forest that has decreasing numbers of trees. While reforestation is increasing the number of trees of an existing forest, afforestation is the creation of a ‘new’ forest.
The benefits of this practice, which is called afforestation are:
It provides a supply of timber, fruit, and fodder for cattle apart from crop production
It prevents soil erosion
It enables better retention of water
It shields crops from excessive wind and sun damage
In terms of the environmental benefits, planting trees is always beneficial whether it takes place in a barren land or is used as a method to regenerate a depleted forest. Trees help check atmospheric carbon dioxide; large scale afforestation can curb the problems caused due to burning of fossil fuels, industrialization and so forth.
In South Africa, about 0.5 percent of land is covered with indigenous forests, and 1.1 percent by forests formed by Total Commercial Afforestation (TCA) and containing trees like pine, gum trees, black wattle, and so forth. This has helped provide wood to be used for charcoal, poles, mining timber, paper pulp, and other commercial.
These days we find that different schools, colleges, universities are coming forward to let there students know importance of afforestation and also encourage them to plant trees and make their city beauty with the flora. Even now a day’s world environment day is also observed on 5th June last year the theme of the world environment day was ‘Connecting People to Nature’, the theme for World Environment Day 2017, implores us to get outdoors and into nature, to appreciate its beauty and its importance, and to take forward the call to protect the Earth that we share.