Afforestation In Turkey
Afforestation In Turkey
The theme of this year’s National Afforestation Day, which has been celebrated since 2019, was “Breath to the Century of Turkey”. The National Day, which was held on November 11 by creating the “Nation Forest” across the Presidential Complex, was celebrated simultaneously with the entire Turkish World. While the ‘Century of Turkey’ logo was created with saplings, hundreds of thousands of saplings came together with the soil at 11.11.
While Turkey brought hundreds of thousands of saplings to the soil, this year it spread to the entire Turkish world with wider participation under the leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The afforestation was carried out with the participation of citizens in 81 provinces with the principle that the Century of Turkey will be the century of agriculture and forestry.
Turkey rose to 27th place
On the subject of forests, which are Turkey’s national wealth, President Erdoğan declared “the vision of green development revolution with net zero emission target in 2053”. For this purpose, the Forestry Organization, which was established in 1839, takes its work to another dimension in its 183rd year. With the afforestation and rehabilitation works carried out, Turkey, which was in the 46th rank in 2015 in the world forest asset ranking, rose to the 27th rank in 2020. In the last 20 years, it has worked on an area of approximately 5.7 million hectares and brought 6 billion saplings to the soil. At the same time, the forest area, which is the carbon sink areas against the effects of climate change, was increased from 20.8 million hectares to 23.1 million hectares. The target within the scope of ‘Breath to the Turkish Century’ is to increase the forest area to 23.4 million hectares in 2023.
Fighting Erosion
Within the scope of combating erosion, work has been carried out on 1 million 176 thousand hectares of land in the last 20 years. In the 1970s, 500 million tons of soil carried by average erosion each year was reduced by one third to 154 million tons. The target for 2023 is to reduce this figure to 130 million tons.
The amount of support and grants to forest villages, which was 96 million TL in 2002, has increased to 400 million TL in 2022. It is aimed to increase these supports, which currently benefit 12 thousand families, to 1 billion liras in 2023 and to benefit more forest villagers.
Watching from 776 towers, interfering with UAVs
For forest fires and illegal interventions, 24-hour surveillance is carried out from 776 towers. Forest fires are being responded to with 55 helicopters, 10 of which can operate at night, 20 planes, 8 UAVs, 1,350 water sprinklers, 692 heavy equipment, 2,270 first response vehicles, 25 thousand personnel and 110,000 volunteers.
In 2022, 8 thousand new employees joined the Forestry Organization and for the first time this year, “Forest Search and Rescue (ORKUT)” teams were established with 462 employees who received special training and were assigned to respond to the fire. In addition, 2 planes, 25 helicopters and 2 UAVs from the Ministries of National Defense and Interior were reserved to be used in case of need.
Fire detection with artificial intelligence
While the first response time to the fire was reduced from 40 minutes to 11 minutes, efforts to record the forests described as ‘Green Homeland’ were started. With the tree identification system, Turkey’s tree inventory is taken. In addition, for the first time, steps were taken to predict fires with artificial intelligence.
The rate of the population under 20 years of age in Turkey is 31.7 percent. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, which wants to benefit from this young population, took action to establish the “Agriculture and Forestry Youth Council”.