Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday, 5 June 2026 announced that more than 35 lakh women Self Help Group (SHG) members across Assam are planting 1 crore saplings in a single coordinated drive to mark World Environment Day. The campaign, tagged #Assam1CrTrees, is being led by women's collectives and positions the state's grassroots network as the primary engine of its greening effort.

Context

World Environment Day, observed every year on 5 June, was established by the United Nations to promote global environmental awareness and mobilise action. This year, Assam has channelled the occasion into a large-scale plantation exercise, with Chief Minister Sarma sharing photographs of women SHG members at work across the state. His post described the initiative as Assam's 'Nari Shakti' — women's power — leading the greening efforts.

Assam faces persistent environmental pressures, including annual flooding, erosion along the Brahmaputra river system, and biodiversity stress. Expanding tree and forest cover has been identified as a long-term mitigation measure by state planners.

Policy Backdrop

Women's SHGs in India are promoted primarily under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), a central government programme that organises rural women into collectives for economic and social development. Deploying this network for environmental work reflects a broader national pattern of using SHG infrastructure for natural-resource management beyond its original livelihood mandate.

Assam has also participated in national afforestation programmes under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) since the early 2010s. The current campaign aligns with India's stated climate commitments, which include raising the country's total forest and tree cover as part of its nationally determined contributions.

Stakeholders and Impact

The most direct participants are the 35 lakh-plus women SHG members whose labour underpins the drive. For these women, the exercise represents both an environmental contribution and a visible public role in a state-level initiative. Rural communities across Assam stand to benefit if the saplings survive and mature, improving local micro-climates and reducing soil erosion.

The campaign also carries political salience for the BJP-led Assam government: mobilising women's groups at this scale on a nationally observed day projects administrative reach and environmental commitment simultaneously.

What's Next

The immediate measure of success will be sapling survival rates over the next two to three growing seasons — a metric that past state plantation drives across India have struggled to document rigorously. Independent assessment of how many of the 1 crore saplings survive to become established trees will determine the ecological value of the exercise. Official green-cover data, updated periodically by the Forest Survey of India, will eventually reflect whether campaigns of this scale produce measurable gains in Assam's recorded tree cover.