Ecobreves – MEXICO: Trees for the Capital

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

MEXICO CITY, Jun 9 2007 (IPS) - Some 100,000 trees of native species will be planted in the next couple months as part of a reforestation program for the Mexican capital. The trees will be planted on 100 hectares of deforested and degraded land in an effort to improve their functioning as suppliers for the aquifers from which a great part of the water consumed in the city is extracted.

“In addition to reforesting, this initiative generates environmental education, because it is mostly carried out by volunteers — and we already have a thousand signed on,” Emiliano Robles, reforestation operations coordinator with the non-governmental group Naturalia.

According to studies by the Autonomous National University of Mexico, in the capital, where about nine million people live and more than 3.5 million vehicles are in circulation, there is progressive deforestation and, among the trees remaining, 15 percent are old and 30 percent are diseased.