SK Nanda Miark Twain once said everyone complains about the weather, but nobody can do anything about it. However, in the age of global warming, one has to control factors affecting weather. In this context, Gujarat has taken up global warming as a challenge with focus on food security, water shortages, migratory pests, intermittent health infections and mitigation of carbon concentration. Green house effect, or GHG as it is known, has unsettled lives and livelihood patterns everywhere, whether it is hot Australian outback or frost-free summers in western countries. For many years, the disparity between the rate of loss of environment and the rate at which it is replaced has been widening. We have got the duty of ensuring that soil is replenished, and ground water and air maintain purity levels by disallowing pollutants to be discharged. The state government has taken a number of initiatives to tackle this phenomenon with concepts like green walling, green building, green technology, green credit and green infrastructure. Farm lands along peripheral and arterial roads criss-crossing the state will see tree plantation as if it were a continuous green wall. The green building rule is being implemented through urban by-laws with an obligation to use solar power for domestic and water heating needs and rain-water harvesting made compulsory In Gujarat, industrialisation is taking place along efforts to increase green cover. The state has just 11 per cent green cover for now, yet efforts are on for green credit by taking up advance plantations on virgin lands of enterprises and corporates that would earn credits when these lands are exchanged for degraded and deforested lands. With the adaptation of Kyoto Protocol, Gujarat has shifted to cleaner fuels like LPG and CNG in public transit systems, apart from opting for solar and wind energy across the state. The synergy between the government and civil society groups is needed in the fight for land and water use and provide space for rejuvenation. But before we start planting trees in the soil, we should plant the first tree in the mind. (The writer is principal secretary environment and forests, Gujarat government)