Hanwha Group, which is developing solar power as a future growth engine, is lending a helping hand to the fight against desertification.

The Korean conglomerate, which sponsored the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification meeting in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province in October, is conducting a tree planting project in the Tujiin Nars in Mongolia.

The project is being carried out in conjunction with a mobile phone application. Each time a user plants a sapling and successfully grows it into a tree within the application, Hanwha Group will plant an actual tree with the user’s name attached within the Mongolian conservation area.

The group estimates that the project will result in about 50,000 trees being planted in the area by the end of the year. The resulting forest will be named Hanwha Forest, the company said. 

The application, Tree Planet, is available through applications stores for free, and users are required to carry out a variety of missions including watering the tree and giving it fertilizer to grow the sapling into a tree.

Aside from the tree-planting campaign, the conglomerate has been working to apply its solar power technologies to fight desertification. Last year, the group signed agreements on fighting desertification with regional governments in China including that of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and supplied solar power generating equipment with 80 kilowatt capacity for the region’s project.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)