- July 6, 2020. More than 5000 people have participated in the campaign of “Plant Tree of Friendship”, director of the Parks and Green Space Organization of Qom Municipality announced.
This campaign was run on the occasion of the National Week of Natural Resources and Arbor Day, which usually celebrated on March 7, but it has been postponed this year because of COVID- 19 outbreak.
Payam Javadian, Managing Director of Parks and Green Space Organization of Qom Municipality, said, “This year, for the third consecutive year, we run a national tree-planting campaign on the subject of planting trees and preserving and caring for green space in Qom, marking Arbor Day.
He stated that the citizens became members of this campaign by texting the word “tree” via their mobile phones, and the Parks and Green Space Organization planted a sapling on behalf of them in the forest areas of Qom.
The municipality official reiterated that the citizens who were participated in this campaign awarded by 30% discount on purchase of flowers and plants.
He went on to add that this year, despite the problems and restrictions caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus, we have witnessed the participation of more than 5,000 citizens in the tree-planting campaign.
Javadian noted that due to the outbreak of the pandemic, tree-planting celebrations and other planned programs were canceled and most of the programs in the field of culture, planting sapling and family programs were designed in a way that can be performed inside the houses.
It should be noted that, every year Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei plants fruit saplings to mark the national Week of Natural Resources, while calling for efforts to protect Iran’s plants, forests and grasslands and to prevent destruction of trees in cities.
Back in November 2015, in a letter to heads of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Iranian government, Ayatollah Khamenei had outlined 15 environmental policies developed in consultation with the Expediency Council in line with implementing the first paragraph of Article 110 of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Constitution.
Development of an integrated national environmental system and the necessity for comprehensive, coordinated and systematic management of the country’s vital resources (including water, soil, air, and biodiversity) are among the most important policies underlined in the letter.
The general policies call for criminalization of destruction of the country’s environment and punishment for polluters and destroyers of the environment.