MEXICO CITY — Officials in Mexico said they’re considering allocating 1% of the military budget for a countrywide tree planting program, with the aim of restoring forests and combatting climate change. President Claudia Sheinbaum proposed dedicating $24 billion of the military’s annual budget to support six million tree planters in the reforestation of around 15 million hectares (37 million acres) across Mexico. The initiative isn’t official yet and doesn’t have a confirmed start date. “It’s absurd and senseless that more is spent on weapons than on addressing poverty or climate change,” Sheinbaum said during this month’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. “We would reduce migration and hunger if we could only elevate the word of love over hate, the generosity of the humble and dispossessed person above greed.” If successful, the program would be the largest reforestation effort in the country’s history, equivalent to the surface area of all of Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador combined, or four times the size of Denmark. Sheinbaum is a former environmental scientist who co-authored the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. She took office in October. Claudia Sheinbaum speaks at the G20 summit in Brazil. Photo courtesy of Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores. “We applaud any initiative that implies the increase in the flow of resources to nature and biodiversity,” said Rosario Álvarez Gutiérrez, general director of Pronatura – Noreste, a Mexican environmental group. She noted that Mexico spends disproportionately little of its GDP on the environment compared to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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