Hikmet Kaya had dry land before him and a decision to make.
It was 1978 in the province of Sinop, in northern Turkey, near the Black Sea. Kaya, then head of forest management, began planting young trees alongside his team and local villagers. It was no symbolic gesture: according to Cultura Inquieta, the process lasted 19 years, and he never stopped working during that time. The final figure is around 30 million trees.
The years passed, Kaya retired, and the trees kept growing without him. When he returned with a before-and-after photograph, the landscape he found no longer looked like the one in the old image: the land looked lush. “We succeeded in this work by cooperating very well with the villagers”, he said, adding that today the district has more forest resources than it did back then, and that it feels very good.
The contrast is even more striking in light of a figure from Global Forest Watch: since 2000, Turkey has lost 5.4 % of its tree cover. Meanwhile, in Sinop, one man and his community did the opposite.
