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The Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change attended Haryana's 77th Van Mahotsav at Manesar, where district-level Van Mahotsav programmes were held simultaneously across all districts of the state.
Haryana has set a target of 1.4 crore trees for the year under the 'Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam' campaign, and the state is working on the Centre's recommendations to protect the Aravallis and curb air pollution.
Those recommendations include solid waste management rules for housing societies, Online Continuous Emission Monitoring Systems and Air Pollution Control Devices for industries, smart traffic management and greening activities.
A nationwide festival of trees to promote plantation and public awareness of forests
Key: Initiated in 1950 by K. M. Munshi, then Union Minister for Food and Agriculture, who moved it to the first week of July to coincide with the onset of the monsoon; the national observance runs from 1 to 7 July as Van Mahotsav Week
Encourage citizens to plant a tree in honour of their mother, linking afforestation to a personal commitment
Key: Launched on World Environment Day, 5 June 2024; Haryana has set a target of 1.4 crore trees for the year under the campaign, with a pledge administered at the Van Mahotsav event
Restore degraded land along the Aravalli range and check desertification spreading towards the Indo-Gangetic plains
Key: Launched in 2023 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; covers a buffer roughly 1,400 km long and 5 km wide across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi, through native species plantation on scrubland and degraded forest land, restoration of water bodies, agroforestry and pasture development
The Aravallis are among the oldest fold mountain ranges in the world, running roughly 692 km from the Delhi region south-west through Haryana and Rajasthan into Gujarat, with Guru Shikhar at Mount Abu in Rajasthan as the highest peak at 1,722 metres. Their significance for policy is not their height but their function: the range acts as a barrier slowing the eastward spread of the Thar desert towards the fertile Indo-Gangetic plains, it recharges groundwater in a water-stressed belt, and its forest cover moderates dust and particulate pollution in the National Capital Region. Decades of mining, quarrying and encroachment have broken the range into gaps, which is why restoration efforts such as the Aravalli Green Wall Project and state plantation drives are framed as air-quality and desertification measures rather than as forestry alone.
Simple Analogy: The range works like a windbreak hedge along the edge of a field: nobody notices it until it has gaps, and then the dust arrives.
The nodal ministry for forests, afforestation and environmental regulation; it launched the Aravalli Green Wall Project in 2023 and issued the recommendations Haryana is acting on
The statutory body for coordinating air quality management across the NCR and adjoining areas of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan — the regulatory backdrop to measures such as OCEMS and Air Pollution Control Devices in industry
Creates the CAQM as a statutory body for air quality in the NCR and adjoining areas; it received presidential assent in August 2021, replacing an ordinance promulgated in April 2021
The Aravalli Range runs about 692 km in a south-westerly direction from near Delhi, through southern Haryana and Rajasthan, ending around Ahmedabad in Gujarat. Guru Shikhar, at Mount Abu in Rajasthan, is its highest point at 1,722 metres. Manesar, the venue of Haryana's 77th Van Mahotsav, lies in the Gurugram region of southern Haryana, within the Aravalli belt that the Green Wall Project targets and inside the National Capital Region for air-quality purposes.
GS Paper 3 > Environment > Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation
General Awareness > Environment and Indian Geography
General Awareness > Environment and Current Affairs
The "Miyawaki method" is well known for the:
Answer: Creation of mini forests in urban areas
Aravalli conservation and NCR air quality are recurring environment themes; Van Mahotsav appears as a static general-awareness fact
The festival of trees, initiated in 1950 by K. M. Munshi and observed nationally from 1 to 7 July
Online Continuous Emission Monitoring Systems — equipment industries install to transmit emission data continuously to regulators
Air Pollution Control Device — equipment fitted at an industrial source to capture or reduce pollutants before release
The 2023 MoEFCC project to restore a roughly 1,400 km long and 5 km wide green buffer along the Aravallis across four states