Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari launched the initial plantation drive on 1,500 km of National Highways at a cost of about Rs 300 crore under the National Green Highways Mission in New Delhi.
The launch was announced at a workshop orgnized by the National Green Highways Mission on the theme “Green Highways Projects: Way Ahead”.
Under the Green Highways Project, the government has made it mandatory to set aside 1% of the total project cost of any NH contract to a Green Fund corpus that will be used for plantation purposes.
The afforestation is expected to help in sequestering approximately 12 lakh mt carbon annually.
The Guidelines document, developed by National Green Highways Mission is in compliance to the directives of Green Highways Policy (GHP) 2015 issued by Ministry of Road Transport & Highways.
The event also saw the launch of ‘Adopt a Green Highway’
The National Green Highway Mission initiated the program’ to engage corporates, Public Sector units, Government organizations and other institutions for developing green corridor along National Highways through plantation and allied activity on avenue, median and other available nearby land patches.
Besides this ‘Kisan Harit Rajmarg Yojana’ was also launched on the occasion. The Yojana is a pilot scheme to extend green belt beyond the existing ‘Right of Way’ of highways by engaging farmers and providing alternative livelihood option to the nearby communities.
A National Green Highways Mission Mobile App was also launched on the occasion. The mobile application will enable the management to monitor all the projects with real time data from the fields.