Tree Planting in the Phillipines

[Guest guest]

MANILA, Philippines - President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took

part Friday in a massive tree-planting campaign aimed at improving

air quality in the Philippines while breaking a world record.

 

The " Green Philippine Highways " project initially aimed to

simultaneously plant 500,000 trees on 2,137 miles of roads across the

sprawling archipelago, but Environment Undersecretary Francisco Bravo

said the figure may have been higher.

 

Some 620,000 seedlings were distributed to government and civic

groups and nearly a million participants signed up, including members

of 4,414 organizations, he said.

 

" This morning, we planted trees all over the archipelago, the biggest

number of trees planted at one time in the history of the world, "

Arroyo said in a speech after launching the project. " We will

probably make it to the Guinness Book of Records for that. "

 

The current record for most number of trees planted simultaneously is

listed as 300,587 in 2005 by 16,317 people at 18 sites across India's

Andhra Pradesh state.

 

There was no immediate word from Guinness on Friday's record attempt.

 

Bravo said participants were given a half-hour to plant, starting at

10 a.m., with each participant asked to sign a document for every

tree planted.

 

The documents were to be verified by village officials, sent to a

computer network at the Department of Environment and Natural

Resources, and then checked by a leading auditing company.

 

The environment department said a recent study showed the Philippines

has the second most polluted air among eight Southeast Asian

countries polled, with vehicle emissions accounting for 70 percent of

the pollution.

 

Experts say at least 10 trees are needed to absorb the carbon

emissions of a single motor vehicle.