Armenia's Tree Project

Creation of new green areas, Knowledge creation and awareness raising

Armenia's climate can be described as highland continental with large variations between summer highs and winter lows. The country's capital, Yerevan, experienced for the first time in 2018 a record temperature of 42 degrees Celsius. Floods also represent a risk for the city capital, and the economy of the country depends heavily on the city. As a response to the many challenges Armenia and its cities has yet to encounter, ATP initiated planting sites throughout Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, as well as in other major cities. ATP aims to focus on the following aspects: 1. To have green areas in cities to protect people against pollutants and dust, and to provide shade and lower temperatures caused by hot summers, traffic, concrete heat and greenhouse gases. 2. To clean the air that the Armenians breathe of carbon dioxide but also to beautify a major part of Yerevan. 3. To plant a variety of climatically suitable seedlings in a given location to help maintain the area's biodiversity and resilience. 4. To engage in an environmental and community building planting program in different urban areas of Yerevan. ATP’s mission is to assist the Armenian people in using trees to improve their standard of living and protect the environment, guided by the need to promote self-sufficiency, aid those with the fewest resources first, and conserve the indigenous ecosystem. ATP’s three major programs are tree planting, environmental education, and sustainable development initiatives. (1,2,3)

Every year ATP engages alongside volunteers and NGOs in planting trees in large areas in cities as well as in rural locations. The trees are grown in local nurseries ( nurseries in Karin and Khachpar villages, with others coming from the Mirak Family Reforestation Nursery, Keti, Aghavnavank, and Margahovit) and the community tree planting happens over 2 seasons: spring and autumn. The planting is based on volunteering based but temporary workers also take part. The planting project has the following schedule: 1. First the team searches for locations for plantings and at the same time they respond to requests for trees. 2. The planting season begins 3. The teams return to sites to check on the trees and offer professional advice. Monitoring visits follow every planting. The team return to the site soon after the planting to ensure the trees take root. They visit all the sites from time to time but priority is given to newly planted sites and 1 year-old sites because they are in the most critical period of the planting process. Older sites are visited less often since the trees there are already out of that critical period, but those sites continue to remain in their plans. (1)

• Non-government organisation/Civil Society
• Citizens or community groups
• Marginalized groups: Socio-economically disadvantaged populations (e.g. low-income households, unemployed)
• Food producers and cultivators (i.e. farmers, gardeners)
• Young people and children