Derdi Kumbhaji, Rajkot Environmental Sustainability & Climate Resilience
Two hectares of unused forest land, and 3,200 trees
Derdi Kumbhaji looked at a barren plot nobody was using and decided to plant it. The saplings have doubled in height since.
There was a two-hectare plot of Forest Department land near Derdi Kumbhaji that nobody was doing anything with. The villagers decided it should be a forest.
Working with the Forest Department, they levelled the ground and fenced it. Then they planted more than 3,200 trees.
The part that usually kills these schemes
Water. A plantation in Saurashtra is easy to start in the monsoon and easy to lose by April.
A local farmer volunteered water from his own supply. On that basis SSKK, the Gujarat Forest Department and the village leadership put in a drip irrigation network across the full two hectares — which is the difference between watering by hand until people tire of it and watering reliably for years.
What has happened since
The saplings have gone from two feet to four, on systematic drip watering and monitoring by the village itself. A bare patch is turning into cover.
Worth being clear about what this is and is not. It is not yet a forest — the trees are four feet tall. What it demonstrates is the arrangement: unused government land, a village that wants it planted, a department willing to partner, and an irrigation system that survives the first summer. That combination is repeatable, which is the point of writing it down.