Planting a sustainable fast-growing forest
to capture carbon
Read time: 3 minutes
On World Environment Day 2022, staff at CNH’s manufacturing plant in Noida (India) began planting a self-sustaining Miyawaki forest to revitalize an abandoned corner of the site
IT IS IMPORTANT TO USE NATIVE TREE SPECIES, WHICH HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF SURVIVAL IN THEIR LOCAL CLIMATE
CNH has an ambitious goal to halve the carbon emissions by 2030, from 2018 levels, and has committed to the Science Based Targets initiative to ensure it makes genuine, measurable changes. Achieving this target within just seven more years will take a coordinated global effort by all the Company’s brands and sites. Yet alongside this corporate effort, there is space for individual efforts by local teams to drive down emissions, improve their local environment or capture carbon.
One such initiative is the planting of what will become a small but dense area of forest, rich in biodiversity, at the New Holland factory in Greater Noida (India). The project was kickstarted by Lokesh Bihan, who manages paint-shop operations at the plant and is responsible for environmental issues, after he read an article about the work of Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki. Miyawaki developed a method of planting small areas with native trees and shrubs, to create forests that grow faster and capture more carbon than traditional ways of planting.
Bihan thought the approach could be used on a belt of land at the Noida plant and discussed what he had read with colleagues and with Miltiadis Mavridis, Head of Environment, Health and Safety for the Asia-Pacific region. Discussions started in January 2022 and within three months they were putting an afforestation plan into action. Other staff at the site were equally enthusiastic about the project and voluntarily took on tasks ranging from liaising with local forestry officials to levelling the wasteland for planting.
“Many of our colleagues have a family background in farming and they felt proud to work on the planting,” says Pankaj Tyagi, the manager responsible for manufacturing activities at Noida. “They enjoy going to see their trees at lunchtime and checking on their progress.”
BEFORE
AFTER
Images from the poster competition drawn by local children for World Environment Day 2022.
BEFORE
AFTER
Layered planting
The Miyawaki technique uses four layers of trees of different heights, starting with shrubs and moving up through three heights to the canopy layer, the tallest. This ensures the young plants all get enough light, even though they are planted thirty times more densely than in a conventional plantation. The Noida site is a belt measuring ten meters by three hundred meters, yet ten thousand trees were planted there over three months during 2022.
Another important element of the Miyawaki method is to use native tree species, which have a better chance of survival in their local climate. In Greater Noida, those include Indian beech and plum trees among the thirty different types planted. The trees are watered twice a week for the first three years, after which the forest becomes self-sustaining. At Noida, the water used is recycled from the plant, so the trees are not using extra resources.
Soil preparation is also an important part of creating a Miyawaki forest. Staff at the Greater Noida plant followed the Miyawaki method of digging trenches one meter deep and pouring in fertilizer and water to improve the soil quality before planting the saplings.
The benefits of Miyawaki planting are substantial — trees grow at least a meter every year, much more rapidly than with conventional methods, says Bihan. The dense forest is reckoned to encourage up to twenty times more biodiversity than usual and can capture thirty times more carbon dioxide.
Taking this action in Greater Noida shows our care for the environment.
The new forest covers an area of
square meters
Adopting trees
The inauguration of the forest was one of the main events of the Noida plant’s World Environment Day (WED) celebrations in 2022. Other events included a poster competition for children on the theme of “Only One Earth” and the opening of a rainwater collection pit. Two other CNH sites in India, Pithampur and Pune, also took part in tree planting. In 2023, commemoration of World Environment Day on June 5 will are being planned around the theme of reducing plastic waste.
Staff at Noida are keeping a close eye on the Miyawaki forest as it grows and “learning what the trees want,” says Tyagi. When visitors come to the site, they are often invited to plant a new tree of their own. The tree is then given their name and a member of staff ‘adopts’ it and takes responsibility for its watering — creating a lasting bond between plant and visitor. “We believe that afforestation is a good thing, as a natural way to absorb carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases,” says Mavridis. “Taking this action in Noida shows our care for the environment.”
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