Turkmenistan to plant 3m trees to make desert bloom

The ex-Soviet state of Turkmenistan announced yesterday a new campaign to plant three million tree saplings this year with the aim of transforming the desert Central Asian nation into a “blooming garden.” President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov signed a decree ordering ministers to plant the three million trees in 2013 alone, government newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan said yesterday. The tree-planting would be carried out with the aim of “transforming our country into a blooming garden and further enriching its beautiful nature in the era of power and happiness,” Berdymukhamedov was quoted as saying in the decree. The country is already battling creeping desertification and last year launched a smaller-scale drive to plant trees and plants around the Sarykamysh Lake which has suffered from the same ecological problems as the depleted Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.