‘Green Wall’ Project Planned to Protect the Aravali Range by 2030

The Haryana government has announced the launch of the Haryana Aravali Green Wall Project with the goal of conserving the ecologically sensitive Aravali mountain range by 2030. This initiative, led by the state’s Environment, Forest and Wildlife Minister Rao Narbir Singh, aims to address environmental threats including desertification, land degradation and drought, by enhancing forest cover and ecosystem resilience.

The Aravali range is crucial for groundwater recharge, biodiversity protection, air quality improvement, and climate mitigation. Haryana plans to work in coordination with other states that share the Aravali - Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi - to restore and protect these hills. The project draws inspiration from large-scale green barrier initiatives and includes community engagement efforts like village-level volunteer groups (“Van Mitras”) and incentives to preserve old trees.

Other proposed elements include expanding green zones in urban areas (“Oxy Vans”) and building on successful models such as the Gurugram Aravali Biodiversity Park, which has been recognised under IUCN guidelines as an effective conservation approach.

This plan aligns with broader environmental goals, seeking to strengthen climate resilience and halt ongoing degradation across the region by the end of the decade.

Coordinated multi-state ecosystem restoration across Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi addresses one of the persistent challenges in Aravali conservation: ecological units that span political boundaries require coordinated policy delivery. Individual state programmes without cross-boundary coordination typically deliver fragmented outcomes.

The Great Green Wall inspiration is instructive. The Sahel programme's mixed delivery record - ambitious ecological objectives combined with implementation-capacity constraints - provides both cautionary lessons and evidence of what sustained multi-stakeholder mobilisation can achieve. Community engagement through Van Mitra volunteer groups and Oxy Van urban projects builds the local ownership that sustained delivery requires.

For companies with operations, supply-chain or biodiversity-linked exposure in northern India, financial institutions supporting nature-linked investment and their CSR partners, Cognitud's nature-based solutions, impact assessment and sustainability due diligence teams help clients evaluate ecosystem-restoration partnership opportunities, structure biodiversity-linked commercial arrangements aligned with Aravali priorities, and prepare disclosures aligned with TNFD, SBTN and jurisdictional biodiversity frameworks that increasingly determine access to nature-linked sustainable-finance.