Ethiopia Broke India's Record of Planting the Most Trees in a Day
The week has been amazing for Ethiopia; a landlocked country in Africa, for its citizens planted 353 million trees in 12 hours, breaking the previous record of 66 million trees in 12 hours which was set by India, back in 2016.
This enterprise was the part of the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed’s Green Legacy Initiative whose original plan was to plant 200 million seeds within 12 hours. However, within the first six hours, the ambitious citizens of Ethiopia had already planted around 150 million plants smashed the original goal!
Abiy Ahmed shared the happy news on his Twitter handle, “#Green Legacy is a vision for the next generation. It is creating a blueprint for them and showing them the way.”
The country’s minister for Innovation and Technology, Mr. Getahun Mekuria, tweeted that 353,633,660 tree seedlings were planted as a part of their Green Legacy Initiative.
The participants of this noble initiative ranged from businessmen, government officials, politicians to staff members and representatives from the UN, African Union and other major organizations.
More than a 1,000 sites across the country were planted with seedlings by the country which is often exposed to situations such as drought and deforestation. This initiative was exclusively started to combat the terrible climatic conditions in the country, as well as, the world.
As per a study by the FAO in 2017, the Ethiopian forests have declined by 0.8 percent (from 14 million hectares in 1999 to 12 million hectares in 2015) in the last ten years. The reason behind such decline is considered to be population growth and the deteriorating rate of rain fall every year.
The condition is worse when you look at it from a wider perspective. Scientists and environmental experts reckon that the world needs to plant more than 1 billion hectares of trees to reduce the decaying condition of the climate.
Even though, the country has broken the previous world record of planting the most trees in a day, the Guinness World Records has still not confirmed Ethiopia as the new record holder for the same. It currently recognizes India as the record holder of the single-day-tree-planting. Well, one can’t ignore the fact that the country held the record with the help of more than 800,000 Indians blooming more than 50 million seedlings.
However, the effort of Ethiopia can in no way be ignored, and the beautiful country deserves to be on the list. Ethiopia joined more than 20 other African countries to have joined the mission of restoring 100 million hectares of land. Most of the country’s initiatives are organized by the African Forest Landscape Restoration.
There are also certain critics of Mr. Abiy who are claiming that the PM of the country took this initiative to distract the people from the conflicts Ethiopia is currently facing; one of them being 2.5 million leaving their homes forcefully due to ethnic differences.
Even so, planting these trees will more or less, help in the revival of the climate. The final aim of this initiative is to plant four billion saplings! Here’s wishing them the best for not only completing but exceeding their planting goal next time as well.
