In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, in an
address to the Nation, acknowledged and made a public statement
on a matter of grave concern. Over a third of the nation’s land,
he said, was degraded and laid bare, and our ecological
security, indeed the survival of the people of India,
inextricably linked with this degraded forest base. He said that
the restoration of the degraded lands of this magnitude could
clearly be set in motion only if it were put into the hands of
the people. This led to the creation of the National Wastelands
Development Board (NWDB) and in order to evolve an institutional
structure to manage common lands so that it meets the basic
fuelwood and fodder needs of the rural poor, they set up the
National Tree Growers’ Cooperatives Federation (NTGCF). N
organizations and committees later, this led to the formation of
the Foundation for Ecological Security, FES, in 2001, to address
the critical task of ecological restoration in the country.
Their website is, simply put, brillian