Ankara, Feb. 20 (CNA) A “Taiwanese Friendship Forest” was inaugurated in Kahramanmaras province in southeastern Turkey with the planting of 30,000 seedlings on Sunday to symbolize the Taiwanese-Turkish partnership in the fight against global warming.
Volkan Huang (黃志揚), Taiwan’s representative to Turkey, and Celalettin Guvenc, head of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s Home Affairs Committee, jointly presided over a ceremony that saw the planting of 30,000 seedlings of Pinus brutia, a native pine species in the eastern Mediterranean region known as Turkish pine, on a 20-hectare plot that was destroyed by forest fires, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Mission to Ankara said in a statement.
“We planted Pinus brutia seedlings in the ‘Taiwan Friendship Forest’ to highlight the partnership between the two countries in combating global warming and reducing carbon emissions,” Huang said during his speech.
“Pinus brutia is native to Turkey and 30,000 Turkish pines are expected to absorb around 360,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide per year,” he said.
As an indispensable member of the international community and based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Taiwan is committed to pursuing its application to join the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to prove its willingness and ability to achieve zero emissions by 2050, in order to build a better and sustainable living environment for future generations, Huang said.
The office took the initiative in response to a forest conservation policy advocated by the Turkish government after it rectified the Paris agreement in October last year to address the challenges posed by climate change and said that no country could act alone to solve the crisis.
In the statement, the Taiwan office said Turkey was devastated by its worst series of wildfires in July and August last year, which erupted in 49 provinces across the country.
A total of 178,000 hectares of forest across Turkey were burned by wildfires in 2021, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System.
