Environment Minister Urges Use Of Vetiver Grass To Stop Soil Erosion

Mahendra Reddy is urging Non-Governmental Or­ganisations (NGOs) and the Private Sector to work with Government and to promote veti­ver grass as a tool for riverbank stabilisation and erosion control purposes.

Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development, Water­ways and Environment said: “We need to work together to scale up such ecosystem-based approaches and use it as a vegetative candidate for bioengineering river stabilisation work.

I now wish to invite them to provide funding and to take own­ership of matching commitment with Government.”

He said Government intended to co-ordinate 50km of vetiver grass planting every year, with NGOs be­ing invited to commit funding for 50km, with the invitation extend­ing to the private sector to provide support for an additional 50 km of vetiver grass.

“We also urge them to adopt this unique community-based model whereby we pay them $12,200 per kilometre or $12.20 per metre of vetiver grass establishment.

In this way, we can achieve 150 km per year with full community ownership and we could achieve the dual objec­tive of protecting our river banks as well as contributing to a green envi­ronment while supporting the com­munity as well,” Mr Reddy added.

He highlighted that the stabilisa­tion of riverbanks was important, but despite current efforts, there was still a lot to be done for the ef­fective management of river banks.

Edited by Jonathan Bryce

Feedback: swashna.chand@fijisun.com.fj