While mulling a range of plans to entice more than a million tourists during 2011, Nepal has come up with another scheme to offer tourists.Nepal, known as world famous tourism destination, is offering ” tree-plantation” opportunity to tourists in perception over global issues — climate change and environment conservation.
Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents (TAAN) unveiled this scheme while marking World Environment Day-2010 on Saturday by planting sapling in capital Kathmandu. “Planting trees on the bank of Bagmati River nearby world famous Hindu shrine Pashupatinath is a long-term scheme which will let those tourists who wish to plant tree and nurse it,” Achyut Guragain, Secretary of TAAN told Xinhua.
According to him, tourists can plant desired saplings and care, but if they do not have time to care plants then they can even handover the guardianship. Soon, TAAN and other tourism enterprises will seek different parks or gardens to plant more trees on the scheme “one tourist, one tree”, said Guragain. TAAN with the support of Pashupati Area Development Trust (PADT) have brought this plan with objectives of maintaining greenery in the periphery of the holy shrine.
Moreover, this plan also inculcates a sense of social responsibility amongst the members of the society toward the current global issues of green energy, climate change, conservation of bio-diversity and eco-system. Meanwhile, Nepali Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation Sharat Singh Bhandari planted saplings during a program organized by TAAN with the theme of “Biodiversity – Ecosystems Management and the Green Economy”. Some 400 different religious saplings including Elaeocarpus Granites, Prosopis Spicigera, Ficus Religiosa, Cinnamomum Camphora, Nyctanthes Arbortristis were planted in the Pashupati area.
Nepal has launched a national tourism campaign “Nepal Tourism Year” (NTY-2011) to attract more than one million tourists in the country which will help it to recover economy damaged by a decade long armed conflict.
