Growing 100 million trees by 2030
Pledge by
Adani Group
Native trees and mangroves to address climate change and enrich biodiversity
- Type
- Restoring & Growing, Enabling
- This pledge will take place from
- 2023 to 2030
- Location
- Australia, India
Pledge overview
The Adani Group is pleased to pledge growing of 100 million trees by 2030. This includes 29.52 million trees which we have already planted and which we pledge to conserve. As a responsible business group, we aim to contribute to the global sustainability agenda. This pledge will support Adani Group’s action towards addressing climate change and its ambition to transition to a low-carbon and subsequently carbon neutral and net-zero business. We recognize that trees are an important carbon sink, they enhance biodiversity and are essential for a healthy planet and healthy people. Our pledge is aligned with India’s NDC commitment under Paris Agreement where the country has committed to create additional carbon sink to sequester 2.5-3.0 billion tons of CO2.
A number of our projects focus on mangroves as many of our businesses are located along the coast. We aim to have 37.10 million mangrove trees by 2030. This includes conservation as well as afforestation. These mangroves will sequester much more carbon during their lifetime when compared to terrestrial plantations. We expect that, with natural regeneration, this number will be much higher. Mangroves are critical to coastal regions – they protect coastlines, enhance marine biodiversity, provide local livelihood, prevent saline water ingress, provide breeding ground for fish and other aquatic organisms, and offer many other benefits. For locations close to our inland businesses and office sites, we will focus on terrestrial plantations and are committing to 63.08 million trees by 2030. These trees offer multiple benefits in terms of reducing air pollution, providing thermal comfort, recharging ground water table, and preventing soil erosion.
Our approach is to plant native species that are able to survive under local climatic conditions and enrich biodiversity. We will use cutting edge technology for seeding, watering and monitoring. At many of our business sites, we will use treated wastewater for the plantations using drip irrigation method. We will adopt various composting practices to recycle bio-waste for purposeful use.
Actions in this pledge
-
Restoring and growing trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Agroforestry
- Activities that establish and manage the integration of trees into agricultural landscapes, silvopastoral systems, farming in forests and along forest margins and tree-crop production
- Mangrove restoration
- Establishment or enhancement of mangroves along coastal areas and in estuaries
- Urban tree planting
- Planting and maintaining trees within urban areas
Additional details
We have already planted 29.52 million trees, including mangroves as well as terrestrial trees. The trees to be planted by 2030 would be a mix of mangroves (15 million) and terrestrial (55.66 million). As an intermediate target, our plan is to increase the number of trees planted to 56 million by 2025.
We will undertake an audit as well as third part assurance for the trees already planted. For the new plantations, which again will consist of mangroves as well as terrestrial trees, we will undertake periodic audit and assurance exercise using technology such as remote sensing/ monitoring by drones and high-resolution satellite imagery, as well as IoT sensors. We plan to undertake the next round of audit and assurance at the end of 2025 or earlier. This will yield important details like survival rates and the number of trees attaining maturity. Based on the results, we will update our pledge.
For our monitoring activities from Corporate Agri Sustainability (CAS), we will appoint our internal horticulture audit team for confirmation of plantation and conservation as well as a third party agency assurance will confirm the targets for the duration of pledge and beyond.
We will provide annual progress updates on tree plantation and growth as per requirements of 1t.org pledge.
Restoring & Growing
- Trees
- 100 million
-
Enabling activities for trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Nursery and seedling development
- Establish tree nurseries, including actions such as identification and collection of seeds and/or growing seedlings
- Sustainable forest management
- Activities that support the stewardship and use of forests (including by local communities and indigenous peoples), to maintain their biological diversity, productivity, and regeneration capacity, as well as their potential to fulfil relevant ecological economic and social functions
- Education and capacity building
- Forest / tree species conservation and restoration education programmes, targeted educational and behaviour change campaigns, training and capacity building, including promotion of local and traditional knowledge and practices
- Community mobilisation
- Community mobilisation and engagement activities for conservation, restoration and reforestation, including enabling systems of community governance, etc.
- Youth engagement
- Engagement of young people and/or youth networks to catalyse a restoration generation
- Data collection, management and technological tools
- Activities that provide data and/or technological tools to support conservation and restoration (e.g. monitoring etc.)
Additional details
We will partner with institutions, community-based organisations (CBO) and youth for our afforestation activities. Our efforts will create new jobs and improve livelihood opportunities. We will build capacity in local communities, promote women led enterprises and involve youth in the afforestation programmes. We will also employ Sustainable Forest Management leading to natural regeneration.
Enabling
Our ecologically and socially responsible approach
We commit to use ecologically and socially responsible approaches to the implementation of our activities, such as planting native species that are able to survive under local climatic conditions and enrich biodiversity, while improving livelihood opportunities and building local community capacity.
Our results tracking
Periodic studies will be conducted to assess the environmental and social benefits.
Ecological metrics
Soil, biodiversity
Social metrics
Economic benefits, jobs, improved livelihoods, equity
Our system of accreditation
For our existing plantations, we will undertake third party audit and assurance in 2023. For the new plantations, we will do the audit and assurance periodically, after 2-3 years of plantations
Our partners
Corporate Agri Sustainability (CAS), at Adani Group will be responsible for implementation activities. CAS is a dedicated vertical at Adani Group engaged in plantations (mangroves as well as terrestrial) for all Adani companies
Our locations
We are working at locations across Australia and India.
Our businesses are located across the country so our conservation and afforestation programmes will be covering 282 sites spread across 21 out of 29 states of India. In addition to our business and office sites, we will be working with sub-national governments like Gujarat in their afforestation programmes.
The sub-national regions where we will be working are: Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.