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President Calderón began by recalling the 1970s, when people felt they had to cut down forests and jungles to provide grazing ground for livestock or sow maize.  It was generally thought that resources were infinite and people that talked about environmental risks were ignored. Global warming has changed all this, though, making people realize they should plant trees to narrow the gap between man and nature and between rich and poor. As the president said, “The Pro-Tree Program will be an unprecedented effort in the history of Mexico to promote the transformation of the forestry sector and turn it into a source of income, money and decent lives for those involved with forests and jungles."
As part of the Pro-tree Program, government will invest over six billion pesos in 2007. These funds will be assigned to the poorest zones and be used to support nearly 400,000 inhabitants in ejidos and communities since forest areas are home to the poorest sectors of the population. The Pro-Tree Program will be used to recover areas regarded as unproductive and to recharge the aquifers essential for man's survival. It will focus on four main areas: first, conservation and restoration, second, planning and forest organization, third, production and productivity, and fourth, to produce infrastructure, means of communication, country roads and all the other things required to contribute to forestry.

President Calderón explained that his government had signed an agreement with the United Nations, included in the Millennium Development Goals, pledging to incorporate the principles of sustainable development into national policies and programs and to reduce the loss of environmental resources. The UN has set of goal of planting a billion trees over the next few years, to which Mexico will contribute by planting 250 million trees this year alone, i.e. a quarter of all the earth's trees.