Ethiopia plants 350 million trees in 12 hours, breaking world record

Officials say that Ethiopia plants over 350 million trees within a 12-hour span, potentially breaking the world record for the most trees planted in one day.

Based on AP report, prime minister Abiy Ahmed created the initiative to help restore Ethiopia’s landscape, which experts say is being eroded by deforestation and climate change.

At the Gulele Botanical Garden in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a historic tree planting campaign was launched earlier this week. Over 350 million trees were planted in an attempt to combat deforestation and climate change.

The final goal of the green campaign is for four billion saplings to be planted.

The Prime Minister even urged civil servants to take part and shut down offices.

The goal was in the course of a 12-hour time span to get 200 million seedlings planted. By the completion of the event, Ahmed was in the process of tweeting that they had achieved the goal of their Equal Access For Ethiopians (EATO) project, which aimed to plant over a million seedlings across Ethiopia in merely six hours.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who celebrated the city’s tree planting events, gave credit on the successful completion of the overall goal to those in charge of the event.

Why Ethiopia plants million of trees?

Drought as well as other scarcity-related phenomena, including the deaths of up to two million of wildlife, occurred in the country in 2017. Ethiopia is among the nations most affected by drought. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations revealed that as of 2018, only 4 percent of the nation was covered in forest. Ethiopia was one of the 20 other countries invited to join the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative in 2017.

Although 70% of the nation’s wooded areas were established in the early 20th century, just 4% remain today.

Officials were accountable for counting the number of trees planted by volunteers.

A representative of the UN Economic Commission for Africa and representative to Ethiopia, UN Environment Programme’s Liaison Office to Africa Union Commission, attended the tree planting event, as well as other United Nations Agencies and various international organizations, and whose support for this ambitious action was crucial.

“We’re halfway to our goal,” Ahmed tweeted before encouraging the citizens to “build on the momentum.” With this extra push from Ahmed, Ethiopians well exceeded their expectations.

Four billion indigenous trees to be planted is the ultimate goal for around 1,000 different sites across the country.
The record for the maximum number of trees planted in a single day belongs to India, where thousands of volunteers planted over 50 million trees in 2016.

The government, private businesses, and the United Nations, the African Union, and the Diplomatic Corps found themselves in near-simultaneous lines for the production of trees.

“Afforestation is the most effective climate change solution to date and with the new record set by Ethiopia, other African nations should move with speed and challenge the status quo,” said Juliette Biao Koudenoukpo, Director of UN Environment’s Africa Office. She added:

“Africa has what it takes to spearhead this global push and as the most affected and vulnerable continent, climate change mitigation must be the topmost priority in the coming days. We at UN Environment are taking the lead in helping to build capacity for nations and people to apply themselves to afforestation and climate change mitigation strategies,”

Forests cover about 30% of our planet’s landmass, but ever since humans started cutting down trees, the “lungs of the world” have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Deforestation has led to severe damage to the environments of many wildlife species, weather patterns, and climate change.

The UN Environment Programme is currently working to decrease deforestation and increase forest cover throughout the world. Mitigating climate change by African countries’ commitments and contributions to the achievement of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is crucial.