Green Club Magazine n.3

"…THE GOAL WAS TO MAKE TREES LIKEABLE, OR MORE SPECIFICALLY, MAKE PLANTING TREES LIKEABLE."

So said Jean Giono about his short story, The Man Who Planted Trees. It is the story of a quiet, lonely shepherd who decides to make the arid valley he lives in more pleasant by planting trees, a hundred a day, over a period of thirty years. The forest flourishes, people gradually return to the long-abandoned hamlets and villages and the valley enjoys a new lease on life. The Man Who Planted Trees was written in 1953. It is a touching, delicate tale just a few pages long, a thumbnail sketch of man and his relationship with nature, so generous when respected. Unfortunately reality tells a very different tale, one of years of deforestation and of forests, a vital resource for our planet, eternally endangered.

Only a few months ago the Brazilian government denounced a huge new upsurge in indiscriminate deforestation. While waiting for the machinery of the law to come up with more restrictive legislation to safeguard the Amazon Basin, the government appears to be considering the use of hi-tech solutions to fight the problem, dusting off a project to employ drones they first experimented with in 2009-2010 and subsequently shelved. Despite Brazil being one of the first countries in the world to use satellite tracking to spot deforestation, the communities in the Amazon Basin might find it easier and quicker to map the territory actively by using drones. This would make monitoring respect for the legal requirement to maintain 80% forest cover on any land owned easier and allow faster intervention to block abuse. Although the satellite systems act as a “global sentinel” against deforestation, action is also needed on the ground to make good the damage done.

Paghera, a company that has always been sensitive to environmental issues, has stepped in personally to help out, with a project to regenerate 50,000 hectares of forest. And it was while working here that Paghera met a missionary priest who had been working in the vast forest for years and helped him to get a project to help poor people off the ground. A farming project that didn’t require the felling of even a single tree and is 100% eco-friendly. From Brazil to the paradise of Santo Domingo is just a short hop, skip and a jump. Here the Paghera Group helped create a lowimpact tourist complex where you can see, touch, smell and even taste the care that has been taken and the respect for nature.

From the materials used to every plant chosen or wall painted, every single tiny gesture that goes into creating a large complex is living proof that every Paghera project shows how you can create environments that only add to the sum of beauty of the whole. A gain for nature, rather than a loss.