Mtatsminda Mountain Being Restored After August 2017 Fire
The Tbilisi-based real estate company m2 met last Thursday with the head of Tbilisi City Hall’s environmental protection department, Gigi Gigashvili, to announce that it has completed the first phase of its planned restoration of the fire-damaged area of Mtatsminda Mountain.
m2 Real Estate is financing a project to give the mountain back its greenery. Representatives from the Mtatsminda Park administration and local university students gathered to plant bushes and put in terraces and footpaths on the 26,000 sq. meters of hillside that burned in the August 2017 fire. The National Seedling Farm planted 3,000 saplings of eight different species and installed a modern irrigation system. Experts from the nearby National Botanical Garden are overseeing the restoration process. The restoration team is striving to initiate the reforestation of Mtatsminda with a focus on creating a biologically diverse and resilient ecosystem.
In February of this year, m2 Real Estate won Georgia’s premier corporate social responsibility (CSR) prize, awarded by the CSR club and Global Compact Network Georgia, in the category of “Successful Partnership for Sustainable Development (project jointly implemented by business and noncommercial partner)” for their project “Restoration of Mtatsminda Forest.”
m2 has committed to covering the costs of maintaining the trees planted for the next three years. The project partners with non-governmental organizations in a public school campaign to prevent fires, teach fire safety, and reduce disasters such as the 2017 fire.
A fire broke out near the territory of the Bombora Mtatsminda theme park in Georgia's capital city of Tbilisi at 10 pm on August 8, 2017 and spread down towards the upper Vera cemetery, damaging a large swath of mature pine forest. The nearby residential areas were evacuated while 70 firefighters fought to control the blaze. There were no casualties reported due to the fire. In September 2017, there was another fire on Mtatsminda Mountain that also burned approximately two hectares. Later that August a massive, multi-day forest fire destroyed more than 10 hectares in the Borjomi Gorge and was battled with assistance from fire brigades from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Turkey.
Corporate social responsibility is becoming increasingly popular in Georgia, and corporations also took responsibility for forest restoration after the Borjomi fire. GEORGIA TODAY spoke to Salome Kukava from Agadgine.ge, a social campaign initiated in April 2017 by the Business Information Agency (BIA) and Treepex Startup in order to restore the areas in Borjomi damaged by fire during the August 2008 War which have been unable to rejuvenate independently. Kukava says that 80% of the trees planted in the framework of the campaign were burned in the week’s fire.
“The planting season ended on May 20 and we were planning to continue planting in September,” she told us. “32,300 trees had been planted [some 3,000 trees per hectare], but following the fire, unfortunately, only approximately 2,000 are left.”
Agadgine.ge plans to replant the trees as soon as a study of the area is done, “considering the recommendations from the Ministry of Environment Protection and other institutions,” Kukava told us. “We’ll keep to all the responsibilities taken on with our campaign and of course we’ll be planting trees to replace those 30,000 that were lost in the Borjomi fire.”
TBC Bank Group, Anaklia Development Consortium, Anaklia City, Coca Cola Georgia, and Lisi Development united with a pledge to restore the Borjomi forest. “In these difficult times, we’re joining our efforts, taking the responsibility to fully restore 10 hectares of the forest,” said Mamuka Khazaradze, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of TBC Bank Group. “I would like to appeal to all businessmen to join us in this initiative. Together, I’m sure we can restore the unique nature of Borjomi”.
PASHA Bank dedicated its 2017 CSR project to rehabilitating the Borjomi forest, working with Agadgine.ge and Tissue Paper. "We hope that the restoration will be done more effectively through our joint efforts," PASHA Bank representatives said. In December 2016, PASHA Bank planted 2017 Georgian Pine Trees in the Daba municipality near Borjomi and later funded the planting of an additional 500 trees as part of the Agadgine campaign. Most of those trees were destroyed by the fire. This year, the Bank donated 2018 trees to the Agadgine campaign.
Speaking about CSR with The Financial in March, head of PR for m2, David Gorgiladze said, “Corporate Social Responsibility, or, to be more precise, Corporate Sustainability, is one of the postulates of our company’s philosophy. It goes directly in line with our company’s motto: creating a comfortable, safe environment for people. We take CSR seriously and focus on more long-term, sustainable projects, which will have lasting, resonating benefits.”
Specifically, on the Mtatsminda restoration project, Gorgiladze said, “Experts and environmental care organizations were unprecedentedly involved in this project. Every step is overseen by specialists with relevant knowledge... At the same time, we tried to add an educational component to this project, in collaboration with our environmental protection NGO partners. The educational aspect implies raising awareness about fire prevention, risk aversion and adequate response to disaster.”
By Samantha Guthrie