14 Trees foundation: Towards reforestation at scale!

14 Trees is founded by Dr. Pravin Bhagwat, a technocrat and also part of the Ecological Society student community. After an enormously successful stint as a technocrat and an entrepreneur, Pravin has dedicated himself to the cause of restoring nature through the mission of reforestation.

Ecological Society is intimately associated with 14 Trees Foundation in the vision of restoration and reforestation at scale. ES has been supporting 14 Trees from a domain perspective and hopes to provide more and more volunteers to this project over time through its alumni base.

14 Trees envisions that this program will be supported by communities, CSR and like-minded individuals.

Background and vision:

India has 28% of barren lands. These were once pristine forests. 14 Trees Foundation has a vision to restore these lands to their past forested glory. In this process the foundation will look at creating local green job opportunities, which could eventually be sustained through rational use of these forests. As a first site to demonstrate that this is viable &achievable, 14 Trees has taken up planting trees at a site near Pune, called Vetale and surrounding area.

2021-2030 is a decade of ecological restoration proclaimed by the UN. The foundation’s vision aligns with this UN mission.

Starting point and status:

Pravin started this experiment around 9 years ago on his own 4-acre barren land. After success on this small patch of land, 14 Trees Foundation was set up to scale up this project. As a first step towards this scale up, 14 Trees has so far planted more than 60,000 trees with more than 90% survival rate. We understand that water is most important resource to get these plants to thrive. To achieve this, the foundation has created 64 water bodies on the initial 200+ acres of land now under the plantation program. This area has expanded to more than 500 acres in last several months.

For the success of the plantation program, saplings selected are native plants based on the reference ecosystem of Bhimashankar, the nearest protected forest area.

One of the most interesting features of 14 Trees program is continued willingness to experiment and learn. This site is an open canvas for restoration experiments - to evolve a methodology to develop (social and geo climatic) context specific climax ecosystems as part of reforestation program, while considering the livelihood and local needs in a holistic manner.

Here are a few pictures which provide you how this place has been developing into a forest of a kind!