Kuwait’s Public Authority for Agriculture Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAFR) said Thursday tree-growing is unequivocally essential for expanding green cover across residential areas and around vital facilities nationwide.
Over the last decades, the authority has thus launched several projects mainly aiming at countrywide stimulating and spurring afforestation, just as part of a relevant state policy and blueprint.
No buts, it maintained, tree-planting contributes to clearing the atmosphere, halting deforestation and degraded land and rehabilitating the environment that has been affected by various factors, primarily human impacts and pollution.
The authority is using new types of plants and trees in order to stop or even ease dust-laden storms and sandy winds nationwide, said the PAAFR in a statement to KUNA.
Afforestation also helps in cutting temperature, slashing wind speed and precluding environment pollution, given the fact that trees produce oxygen and clean the air, it said.
Furthermore, it leads to the protection of birds, animals and insects, including migratory ones, especially endangered species, it added.
In fact, according to the authority, tree-growing has contributed to creating a green strip spanning from north and west Kuwait to south in the context of a state drive to improve environmental conditions in the country.
For instance, Al-Omarya Nursery, which was established in 1955 as the country’s first-ever nursery, provides all sorts of plants and trees in a bid to encourage countrywide planting.
On green projects in Al-Jahra Governorate, it said that a forest of tamarisk plants, which are used as ornamental shrubs, windbreaks, and shade trees, was created in 1965, noting that a planting project in northwest Al-Jahra included the growing of as many as 40,000 trees.
In spite of the dearth of environment components, scorching sunrays, scarcity of rainwater and lack of permanent solutions to relevant problems, a spring camping project (Saad Al-Abdullah and Jaber Al-Ahmad) have been carried out by planting roughly 40,000 and 14,000 plants in two phases.
Placed along north of Al-Jahra Road, the project, which was created in 1969, covers a total 5,700 sq. km and is home to 72,000 types of plants and seeds.
Al-Sulaibiya Project was established in 1968 on an area of 5,000 sq. km along the Sixth Ring Road, and is home to 50,000 species.
Spanning on 150 sq. km, Al-Wafra Project was established in 1998 in order to provide a green cover acting as a windbreak in Al-Wafra. As many as 32,000 plants were grown there.
Furthermore, a planting project was set up behind Kuwait International Airport on a coverage of 350 sq. km and initially included 70,000 trees and 20,000 more plans were later grown.
Furthermore, several other afforestation projects were carried out in different areas in Kuwait, where thousands of various trees were planted for the same purpose.
The authority said in its statement that its cooperation with other state concerned bodies has produced joint projects aiming at revamping the agricultural sector and rehabilitating the environment in the country.
In this context, the authority noted that the Middle East Green Initiative was launched in March with a view to growing 50 billion trees and boosting forests in the Middle East region.
The importance of reversing the effects of climate change is tangible across the Middle East and North Africa, where the impact of rising temperatures is already affecting livelihoods and opportunities.
The initiative is mainly meant to plant 50 billion trees across the Middle East (including 10 billion at home in Saudi Arabia), through afforestation, restore an area equivalent to 200 million hectares of degraded land reducing 2.5 percent of global carbon levels, and contribute to reducing carbon emissions resulting from hydrocarbon production in the region by more than 60 percent.
Source: Kuwait News Agency