United Nations Environment Programme informs that this week, at the Gulele Botanical Garden in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia launched a historic tree planting campaign. Over 350 million trees were planted breaking the world record held by India since 2016.
According to the United Nations, Ethiopia’s forest coverage has declined drastically to 4 per cent in the 2000s from 35 per cent a century earlier. Ethiopia aimed at planting 200 million trees in a single day in 1,000 sites across the country in a move to tackle the effects of deforestation and climate change in the country.
In a scientific paper published in the Science magazine, researchers estimate that a worldwide tree planting program could remove two thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere as a result of human activities.
Recently many African countries have engaged in massive tree planting campaigns including Kenya who has recently, with support from the UN Environment Programme, launched the “Greening Kenya Initiative” to preserve the forest cover.
UN Environment Programme is closely working with countries across the continent to replicate such initiatives to stop deforestation and increase forest cover.