Crosslinks Foundation launches TreeShala, a Micro-Forestry model to combat Climate Change

Bhubaneshwar, March 21, 2023 - Crosslinks Foundation, an innovative charity organization working in the areas of sustainable development, rural livelihoods and financial inclusion, today announced its new TreeShala program ("Abode of Trees") to mark the International Day of Forests. TreeShala is introducing a novel micro-forestry model to plant a combination of forestry and fruit trees on small farm holdings across India. By aggregating millions of small landholdings, TreeShala seeks to bring marginal farmers to the forefront of climate action while simultaneously addressing their income and livelihood concerns. Besides investing its own funds, Crosslinks also plans to forge partnerships with concerned individuals, startups, mid-sized businesses and large public corporations to achieve its ambitious target of covering at least 10,000 acres of farm holdings in the next 1000 days.

Santosh, Chairman and Trustee at Crosslinks Foundation said, "We are excited to join the battle against global warming with our TreeShala initiative. Traditionally, tree plantation drives have mostly relied on landscape-scale afforestation activities driven predominantly by large corporations and grantors. As a result, a large section of the global farming community with small and fragmented holdings has been unable to effectively contribute to this important planetary mission. TreeShala's incremental forestry approach will plant anywhere from 20 to 100 trees per acre on sub-hectare farm plots thus enabling even smaller investors to participate in our mission. A significant portion of the targeted acreage has already been identified thus giving us a significant advantage in achieving TreeShala objectives."

Dr. Subrat Rout, Chief Technology Advisor at Crosslinks Foundation said, "The world has been witnessing a surge in extreme weather events such as storms, floods, heat waves and wildfires that threaten our very existence. Going forward, it will not suffice to just reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in order to limit global warming but the need to create large carbon sinks by adopting practices such as agroforestry and regenerative agriculture will become equally critical. Our TreeShala initiative is an important step in this direction. Besides focusing on the actual plantation protocols, Crosslinks will also leverage and build advanced geo-mapping, remote sensing and data analysis tools to enable our sponsors to remotely monitor tree growth and health right from the sapling stage till maturity."

Crosslinks Foundation, SBI Colony, Kesora, Bhubaneswar, Odisha - 751002
Contact: isanam@crosslinksfoundation.org

Founded in 2014, Crosslinks is a registered charitable trust with a vision to harness modern technologies and policy toolsets to facilitate lasting social change. Crosslinks focuses on inter-disciplinary social sector challenges in critical developmental areas related to climate change, digital inclusion and poverty alleviation. Crosslinks is working with its national and international partners on a portfolio of projects that involve a strong community outreach component, use of next-generation mobile/web/sensor technologies, and an evidence-based practice through randomized field experiments.

This release was published on openPR.