（このブログはABMORIの取組を世界にも発信するため、日本語で掲載したブログ（10月21日掲載）を英文で掲載しています。）

Hello, everyone. We are the tree-planting sisters, Forest Protection Girl and Conservation Girl, unofficial
mascots of Nagano Prefecture.

Have you ever heard of ABMORI? It is a tree-planting project started by the Kabuki actor Ichikawa Ebizo
and Yamanouchi Town Hall.

The project began in 2014, and since then, trees have been planted every year by 1,000 to 1,500
participants.
Surprisingly, most participants are from outside Nagano Prefecture. In 2019, 942 volunteer participants
came from 27 different prefectures, with 80% coming from outside Nagano. The activity is well-known
across Japan, and participants come at their own expenses. Awesome!

ABMORI’s sixth year (June 1, 2019)
1,500 participants planted 10 thousand trees in the Shiga Kogen Hasuike Ski Area.

The governor of Nagano Prefecture, Abe Shuichi, is also an advisor on the ABMORI executive committee,
and participates in tree-planting every year. The governor is highly enthusiastic about the project, and
would like people around the world to know about it.

We think it’s an incredible project too! So we thought about what we could do and came up with the idea of launching
a blog to communicate globally.

You can find more details about our activities on ABMORI’s homepage (Japanese only): https://abmori.com/

In our blog, we will introduce different perspectives on ABMORI, which does more than just tree-planting. Our activities fall into five different categories, shown below.

In this blog, we would like you to know that ABMORI’s actions can also help achieve global development
goals.

Have you heard the term “SDGs”? This abbreviation is widely used by companies and governments.
You may have seen it in newspapers or on TV.

ABMORI’s actions fall right in line with the SDGs. SDG stands for Sustainable Development Goals.
The SDGs were approved by all UN member states in 2015 as a universal call to ensure security and peace.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan website explains the SDGs as follows:

“The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the 2030 Agenda) is a set of international development
goals from 2016 to 2030, which was adopted by the UN Sustainable Development Summit held in
September 2015 building on the success of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“The 2030 Agenda listed “Sustainable Development Goals” consisting of 17 goals and 169 targets in order
to eradicate poverty and realize a sustainable world.

The SDGs are universal goals applicable, not only to developing countries but also developed countries,
and pledge “Leave no one behind.” through the implementation process.

“Japan makes utmost efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda with international community based on the
concept of human security.”

Hmm, all seems pretty complicated. In plain words, SDGs are 17 goals and 169 targets decided by nations
across the world to be achieved by 2030 for everyone to live happily.

Here are the 17 goals.

Goals 11 and 15 in particular seem to overlap with ABMORI’s “personal exchanges and tree-planting” and “realization of a sustainable society” initiatives, respectively.

Goals 11 and 15 are:

To put them simply, Goal 11 aims to link big cities and rural areas together, and Goal 15 aims to maintain forests by planting trees. Too simple? But it’s true that movements like ABMORI can lead to people living more happily all over the world.

For ABMORI, sustainability has always been the priority. Even the year prior to the SDGs’ adoption,
ABMORI had started its activities to build a more sustainable society. Amazing, isn’t it?

In consideration of the coronavirus pandemic, ABMORI’s 2020 tree-planting activities were unfortunately canceled. However, we will keep reporting on the wonderful actions of ABMORI to let people of the world know about them.

See you all next time!

To be continued.