Protecting India's green cover: Tomorrow's forest today

Bidadi, Karnataka: During the Greenathon we are promoting trees as one of the best weapons against climate change.

Toyota launched a massive tree-planting drive in Karnataka.

Six-year-old Varun is working hard on a holiday. So is little Aryan. Tough job after all, to create a forest out of plain land, as Toyota Kirloskar Motors has set out to do, on the outskirts of Bangalore at their campus in Bidadi. Part of a 6,000-plus crowd that planted 30,000 saplings on Sunday, Aryan is thrilled with the results.

NDTV: How many trees did you plant today?
Aryan: Eight!

Mango, neem, banyan, 51 native species were chosen. For that was the advice given by renowned Japanese ecologist Dr Miyawaki to Toyota when the company sought his advice.

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Dr Akira Miyawaki, Director, Japanese centre for International Studies in Ecology: "Only the real native vegetation has sustained the typhoons, the natural disasters like fire, tsunami etc. If we put exotic species, they grow very fast, but they also die very fast."

Vikram Kirloskar, Toyota Kirloskar Motors: "We have been planting trees all over the place but the way we are doing it this time is creating a natural forest inside not a laid out tree plantation.‬"‬ ‪ ‬‪

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Thanks to thousands of people at work on a Sunday, the land behind me will be a sustainable forest a few years down the line. A clean green example of how a company can stay right at the top and yet do fabulous things for environment and the earth.