ARMENIA TREE PROJECT
65 Main Street
Watertown, MA 02472
617-926-8733
info@armeniatree.org
www.armeniat ree.org
For Immediate Release
September 10, 2004
ATP Executive Director Addresses UN DPI NGO Conference
WATERTOWN, MA — Armenia Tree Project (ATP) Executive Director Jeff
Masarjian participated this week in a panel held as part of the 57th
annual United Nations Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental
Organization Conference at the UN headquarters in New York. The
conference, titled “Millennium Development Goals: Civil Society Takes
Action,” is taking place from September 8-10.
The focus of the conference is the role of NGOs as well as civil
society and governments for implementing the eight Millennium
Development Goals adopted by the UN in 2000. ATP was invited to
participate in the conference by the Armenian General Benevolent
Union in association with Rotary International, NGO Committee on
Human Rights, Peace Action, and the World Federation for Mental Health.
At the September 8 panel discussion with representatives of two other
NGOs, titled “Overcoming Obstacles to Economic Growth and Community
Development: The Role of Civil Society,” Mr. Masarjian outlined the
ways that ATP reforestation efforts are addressing many of the UN
Millennium Development Goals. The following is an abridged text of
Mr. Masarjian’s speech:
ATP Programs Contribute to Fulfillment of UN Millennium Goals in
Armenia By Jeff Masarjian, Armenia Tree Project Executive Director
Armenia Tree Project was founded in 1994 in response to the massive
felling of trees for fuel during the harsh winters of the early
1990s. The mission of Armenia Tree Project is to improve the human,
economic, and environmental conditions of Armenia through the planting
of trees, aiding those with the fewest resources first.
Forests and trees are important and necessary components for
maintaining the environmental and economic infrastructure of a
nation. They clean the atmosphere, absorbing carbon dioxide and
pollutants, while simultaneously releasing oxygen. They attract and
retain moisture, both in the air and the soil, helping to regulate
and stabilize the climate. They prevent erosion and landslides, while
retaining precious topsoil, which is otherwise washed away with the
rain, becoming silt in rivers, streams and lakes, choking plant and
animal life.
Forests also provide habitats for a diverse array of flora and fauna.
Armenia is home to over 3,600 species of flowering plants, many of
which are endangered and exist only in the ecosystems provided by
the dwindling forests.
>>From 1994 – 2002, Armenia Tree Project focused its activities on
creating jobs through re-greening public spaces, many of which were
littered with the stumps of sacrificed trees. ATP works closely with
the residents of local institutions, such as schools, senior centers,
hospitals, and orphanages, as well as neighborhoods.
Once accepted as an ATP site, residents receive the training and
tools they need to plant and tend the trees. The relationship is based
upon a contract between ATP and the recipient institution or group,
which agrees to replace the trees at its own expense if less than 70
percent survive.
By appealing to residents’ self interest, and using informal incentives
to promote compliance with the agreement, ATP is fostering a growing
respect for the environment through traditional value systems and
needs of the community. Residents–who had previously been plagued
with despair, while expecting the government or others to do something
for them to improve their lot–are now in a position of taking action
to make a direct impact on their immediate environment.
To date, ATP has assisted community residents in planting over 375,000
trees at 477 sites in every region of Armenia through our Community
Tree Planting program. ATP works closely with community schools to
develop environmental lessons, which are not typically part of the
standard curriculum.
The restoration of urban green spaces is the goal of ATP’s Coppicing
Program, which employs several hundred Armenians each year in seasonal
work. Coppicing is a forestry technique by which tree stumps with
intact root systems are trimmed of shoots, leaving the strongest one
to grow into an exact replica of the original tree.
To date, ATP staff has supervised the restoration of 760 acres of land
at several sites, including the Armenian Genocide Memorial, Botanical
Gardens, Victory Park, and Paros Hill, all located in Yerevan. Over
155,000 trees have been restored through ATP’s coppicing program
since 1999.
The trees ATP supplies to community sites are propagated from seeds
and cuttings in our two state-of-the-art nurseries, founded in 1996
and 1998 in the refugee villages of Karin and Khatchpar. The nursery
sites were chosen specifically to provide employment opportunities for
Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan who are supporting extended families,
and who would otherwise have no source of income. The nurseries’
29 employees are responsible for the production of 50,000 trees each
year for planting at community sites.
The 53 species of trees growing in our nurseries are all indigenous to
Armenia, and were chosen for their hardiness in surviving Armenia’s
harsh climate. With the opening of the new Michael and Virginia
Ohanian Environmental Education Center at ATP’s nursery in Karin
village, students from the State Agricultural Academy and elsewhere
will attend multi-media seminars and receive hands-on field practice
with our staff.
In 2001, in response to a growing body of evidence published in
documents by the UN, the World Bank, and other sources regarding
the immediate and critical state of Armenia’s deforestation and path
towards desertification, ATP initiated a series of strategic planning
sessions to devise new interventions that might have a greater impact
for the people and land of Armenia.
We realized that we needed to devise innovative new programs which
would not only plant considerably more trees, but also address
the widespread poverty and despair suffered by nearly half of all
Armenians. Many Armenians live in rural villages, and are forced to
strip the surrounding forests of trees for heating and cooking fuel,
as well as for sale to commercial interests.
In Fall 2002, ATP met with the leaders of Aygut, a small, slowly
dying Armenian refugee village, comprised of 290 families. Youth and
young adults would routinely leave seeking opportunities elsewhere,
and elders longed for their lost homes and villages in Azerbaijan.
The school principal spoke of a plot of land near the river which
she had hoped would someday be an orchard, supplying income to
purchase badly needed school supplies. ATP agreed to provide technical
assistance and 500 fruit and nut trees for the site, if residents could
collaborate together to clear the land, build irrigation channels and
a road to the site, and fence it in for protection from livestock. ATP
also developed an environmental curriculum for the school and trained
teachers in presenting it.
The members of the Aygut community succeeded in completing their part
of the contract within weeks of our initial meeting. By Spring 2003,
500 fruit and nut trees were planted by school children and adults,
assisted by the US Ambassador to Armenia, John Ordway, and other
invitees, who celebrated Earth Day at the new Aygut School orchard on
April 22. I’m very happy to report that I observed the first cherries
blossoming on the trees this summer.
Seventeen families also signed up to participate in a pilot project
whereby they would be trained to propagate several thousand tree seeds,
collected locally, in newly developed backyard nurseries. For each
surviving seedling that the participant will then plant in the forest,
ATP will provide a set payment.
Seven species of local tree seeds are currently being propagated,
and some have already reached a height of 12 inches and may be out
planted this fall. In this, the pilot phase of the project, 20,000
seedlings are being grown; we hope to increase this 10 fold over the
next two years by expanding this micro-enterprise opportunity to more
residents in Aygut and other villages.
This project can potentially increase the annual income of
participating families several times over, without negatively impacting
the amount of land needed for subsistence farming. In addition, because
the trees are grown using a short-term rotation cycle of 12-18 months,
the per-unit cost is less than in our traditional nurseries, creating
a win-win situation for everyone.
There are 13 villages in the river valley where Aygut is located,
comprising 6,000 people. ATP plans to replicate programming in three
new villages in 2005, using the same methodology to promote economic,
ecological, social, and cultural development. We expect that the
fruit produced in this valley will not only contribute to residents’
food security, but also attract the interest of businesses involved
in fruit juice production and export.
Early on in our involvement with the residents of Aygut, it became
clear that the humanitarian and development needs of this village were
far beyond ATP’s individual capacity. We took a very collaborative
approach to our work in the village, inviting other international aid
organizations and NGOs to visit the village and observe the progress
achieved over the past year.
Organizations such as UN World Food Program, UNDP, Heifer
International, Project Harmony, USDA, Peace Corps, Satsil, and
Jinishian Family Foundation, among others, have contributed expertise
and support in furthering the social and economic development of Aygut.
The Mayor recently reported that since ATP initiated programming there,
emigration from the village has halted, there has been a noticeable
improvement in the overall demeanor and perspective of villagers,
and there was even a record number of births, all indicators of a
growing sense of hope and optimism.
In addition to this innovative community development and reforestation
programming, ATP this year partnered with a local environmental NGO,
called Tsiatsan, in the city of Vanadzor, to build a six hectare
reforestation nursery that has the capacity to produce over one million
trees each year beginning in 2006. These trees will be used to reforest
the devastated hillsides around the city, which have become subject
to serious erosion and landslides over the past 13 years.
In conclusion, Armenia Tree Project is implementing its mission to
protect and restore Armenia’s forests through a unique combination of
programming that aims to plant a growing number of trees each year,
while providing opportunities for employment, sustainable economic
development, training and education.
Our goal is to empower residents to become stewards of their
environment while also enhancing their standard of living and hopes
for their children’s future. It is our hope that our decentralized
approach to developing an environmental ethic based on education,
action, and self-determination will eventually lead to a national and
even regional commitment to environmental protection and enforcement
of sustainable practice.