The Republic of Congo's President Denis Sassou N'Guesso is urging his fellow citizens to plant more trees so that the Central African country can achieve sustainable development.

The president made the call Tuesday to mark the 26th National Tree Planting Day with a theme of "Planting trees for the emergency of the green economy."

"The Congolese, wherever they may be found across the national territory, should each plant a tree on Nov. 6. This is the law and no one can be allowed to break the law.

"Today, we must start thinking of development differently; a sustainable development for the current and future generations; we must diversify the Congolese economy, there's agriculture, livestock keeping, fish farming and timber transformation," the president said.

He also led government officials to plant 1,600 trees at Kintele in the capital Brazzaville.

The Congolese National Tree Planting Day was established by law in 1984 to protect the country's forests, which alongside resources in neighboring countries, constitutes what media call the second lung of the world after the Amazon rain forest in Brazil.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organizations (FAO), about 17,000 hectares of forests are destroyed each year in the Republic of Congo due to human activities like agriculture, timber industry and charcoal production.

The Congolese Forestry Ministry's statistics show that more than 508,000 trees were planted on a radius of 550 hectares in the country's previous tree planting days.