Youth Speaker entry #19: Shubhendu Sharma (India)

I am Shubhendu Sharma, 30 years old, from India. I run a company called Afforestt which makes natural forests in urban spaces.
I am an Industrial Engineer by qualification and now specialise in afforestation. I am a social entrepreneur, founder and director of Afforestt.
Also a TED Fellow, INK fellow and Ashoka Fellow.

We at Afforestt specialise in a methodology which makes forests grow 10 times faster than normal growth rate of trees, once established (which usually takes 2-3 years), these forests do not need any maintenance or watering, finally becoming a 100 years old natural forest in just 10 years.

Planting a forest

We are a for profit social enterprise on a mission to bring back our lost forests, we do it by creating them.
Our methodology is based on the Miyawaki Method of afforestation invented by world renowned scientist Dr. Akira Miyawaki.

We make these forest using trees native to the land and plant them in selected ratios and sequence in order to finally deliver a multilayer forest. Being native, these forests do not require any management what so ever. The Miyawaki method enables us to plant small forest patches in midst of the urban infrastructure thus making the method ultra useful for cities, we can make a 300 trees forest in area as small as 100 Sq Mtrs. (1,000 Sq Ft.) i.e parking spaces of 6 cars.

Compared to a monoculture plantation or a garden, these forests are 30 times more dense, hence providing all the environmental benefits 30 times more. i.e 30 times more Oxygen, water retention, pollution absorption etc.

These forests also act as the natural habitat for the local fauna and hosts various birds and animal species which make it their home, thus they can be up to 100 times more bio-diverse compared to conventional plantations.

We do not use any chemical or industrial fertiliser in making of these forests keeping the process 100% organic.

We also openly share our methodology so that more people and businesses can make use of it. The methodology is independent of geography and works anywhere and everywhere.

Text, picture and video are submitted by Shubhendu Sharma (Afforestt-India) – shubz(at)afforestt.com

The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.

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This post is published as an application by the author, to speak as a youth representative at the World Forestry Congress. Have a look at the other entries too!

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