Bahrain’s first pocket forest initiative kicks off
TDT | Manama
The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
Works Minister has made a green step by inaugurating the first pocket forest initiative in Bahrain at Hidden Treasure Garden to celebrate Earth Day.
Essam Khalaf said the Minister of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning, in collaboration with the Indian Ladies Association and the Garden Friends Team, is behind the environment volunteers project.
Pocket forest or Miyawaki is a technique pioneered by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki for building dense and native forests. The approach is supposed to ensure that plant growth is ten times faster and the resulting plantation is 30 times thicker than usual.
The method involves planting dozens of native species in the same area and becomes maintenance-free after the first three years. “The plants chosen for the pocket forest project here are those with high resilience, such as neem and almond,” said Lamia Youssef Al-Fadhala, the Director-General of the Northern District Municipality.
The project, launched Thursday, is being established on a 225 square meters area. “Plants will easily take up to nine months to grow enough roots to become self-sustainable,” said Al-Fadhala. “However, its success depends on the growth of a dense arboreal vegetation in the area,” Al-Fadhala stressed.
The project, she said, also reflects the success of the community partnership in public initiatives. The mini-forest would serve as a nucleus for future developments in the area, she added.
Al Fadal said that projects like this would eventually help Bahrain regain its long lost features of the island of a million palm trees. For her part, the President of the Indian Ladies Association, Nisha Rangarajan, said the idea is apt for celebrating the International Day of Earth, which is celebrated every year on April 22. The day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
Earth Day was celebrated first on April 22 in 1970. It became a topic of discussion after more than 20 million Americans took to the streets to protest against environmental ignorance by the government. Since then, it has been an annual event.
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