President Chen Shui-bian planted a flame tree on Tree-planting Day, celebrating the vitality of life and advocating the importance of environmental protection.
"To plant trees in the spring season adds aesthetic touches to the environment and connotes a sense of infinity," the president said in his remarks, referring to frustrations and setbacks generated when civilization pushes its envelop.
Happy to join the annual tree-planting event again, the president, however, warned that "while competing with nature has elevated our living standard, the most precious natural resources have at the same time been exploited and destroyed."
The president cited the example of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Wangari Maathai, who, in the mid 1970s, encouraged Kenyan countrywomen to plant trees, which expanded to the proverbial "Green Belt Movement" and has bred the Kenyan land into spirituality and sustainability. "The annual 'Tree-planting month,' initiated by the Council of Agriculture," the president said, "can be another green belt movement, in which we conceive each of ourselves of a tree that grounds its roots of care downward into the soil, extends its strength upward to the sky, connects to one another to form a Taiwan green belt, and blossoms into fragrance and success."
Tree-planting Day is set in memory of the nation's founding father, Dr. Sun Yat-sen's death. "To plant the flame tree," the president concluded in his remarks, "I ask each of you to adhere your roots to the ground, and make Taiwan a green Treasure Island from one generation to another."