Honda has a history of pursuing advanced initiatives based on careful thought about humankind and nature, and the evolution of today's watershed preservation activities from the Community Forest initiatives that spawned them reflects that legacy.
Unlike the uniform approach to greenification that consists of creating a visually attractive lawn and then planting non-native trees, the cultivation of forests contributes to local environmental preservation as well as to the protection of tree species that are being lost along with their distinctive ecosystems.
During the 1970s, Honda held a dialog exploring the meaning of truly useful afforestation as part of the process of developing environmental measures at its Sayama Plant in Saitama Prefecture. While that process was ongoing, then-executive vice president Michihiro Nishida discovered and was deeply impressed by a theory of community forests propounded by Akira Miyawaki, then a professor at Yokohama National University. He launched a Community Forest Executive Committee the same year and set in motion initiatives at all the company's worksites.
Miyawaki's community forest concept seeks to restore and maintain the natural world and environment in local areas by cultivating trees suited to the local ecosystem to create a “tutelary” forest. Plants are the only oxygen producers on Earth, and human and animals cannot exist without them. In short, the community forest exists to ensure our own survival.
Honda believes that sharing those community forests with residents of the local community is a mission entrusted to each and every associate.
Area around the front of the Sayama Plant at Saitama Factory when the Community Forest initiatives were launched in 1977; seedlings are being planted in the areas covered by white-looking straw.
The same location photographed in 1987, 10 years after the trees were planted; the seedlings have grown to over 10 meters in height to become a forest.