Gr Noida to have India's 'biggest' miyawaki forest: officials

Two-lakh plants will come up in a 71,000 sq metres land in Greater Noida with officials on Wednesday giving clearance for the dense forest, billed as the biggest to be developed via miyawaki, a Japanese technique. The Gautam Buddh Nagar administration inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Korean electronic major Samsung for the massive afforestation in Dadri area, officials said.

"As per the MoU, Samsung, which already has its biggest mobile factory in Noida, will develop the forest and take care of the plants, trees for a period of 10 years," District Magistrate Brajesh Narain Singh told reporters. "The work will be done as part of the company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) work and the agreement also makes it clear that the land will not be leased to them or they will not have ownership of the property of any kind," he said.

Miyawaki is a technique pioneered in Japan that helps build dense, native forests. The approach is supposed to ensure that plant growth is 10 times faster and the resulting plantation is 30 times denser than usual. "We have earlier experimented the miywaki technique at the collectorate in Greater Noida on 3,500 sq metre and the results have been satisfactory. Now Samsung has partnered to develop 71,000 sq metre dense forest. By what we understand, this is going to be the biggest miyawaki forest in the country," Singh said.

Gautam Buddh Nagar, adjoining Delhi in western Uttar Pradesh, has a forest cover of approximately 1.5 per cent, much lower than ideal 33 per cent, according to officials. The administration said it has stepped up efforts to enhance land cover and has targeted to convert 250 acre of land into forest this year. "We have already put in place plans for over 150 acre with support from private partners," Singh said.

"Samsung will provide continuous support and we will create a dense miyawaki forest here," Managing Director, Samsung Noida, M S Chang said.

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