Shubhendu Sharma creates afforestation methods that make it easy to plant maintenance-free, wild and biodiverse forests.

Why you should listen

Industrial engineer Shubhendu Sharma was working at Toyota in India when he met Japanese forest expert Akira Miyawaki, who'd arrived to plant a forest at the factory, using a methodology he'd developed to make a forest grow ten times faster that normal. Fascinated, Sharma interned with Miyawaki, and grew his first successful forest on a small plot behind a house.Today, his company Afforestt promotes a standardized method for seeding dense, fast-growing, native forests in barren lands, using his car-manufacturing acumen to create a system allowing a multilayer forest of 300 trees to grow on an area as small as the parking spaces of six cars -- for less than the price of an iPhone. Afforestt has helped grow forests at homes, schools and factories. Sharma seen improvement in air quality, an increase in biodiversity -- and the forests even generate fresh fruit. Afforestt is at work on a platform that will offer hardware probes to analyze soil quality, allowing the company to offer step-by-step instructions for anyone who wants to grow a native forest anywhere in the world.

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Shubhendu Sharma’s TED talks

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Science

How to grow your own tiny forest

April 23, 2020

Fighting climate change can feel overwhelming, but what if action looked like something as small as planting a tree -- or a forest? A forest can be grown anywhere, even in your own backyard. Shubhendu Sharma, an eco-engineer and TED Fellow, explains how.

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Business

Seeing opportunities for change: The talks of TED@BCG

May 20, 2016

The future is built by those who see opportunities for change and act on them. At TED@BCG — the latest TED Institute event, held on May 18, 2016, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris — speakers explored what it means to transform boldly. In three sessions of talks, curated and hosted by TED’s Editorial […]

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