Ethiopia plants more than 350 million trees in 12 hours

Ethiopia planted more than 353 million trees in 12 hours on Monday, which officials believe is a world record.

Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous country in Africa after Nigeria.

Ethiopia is the only case among African countries that has never been colonized, maintaining its independence during the distribution of Africa, except for a period of five years (1936–1941), when it was under Italian occupation. It is also the second oldest nation in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion after Armenia. However, it was the first kingdom to adopt Christianity, being a monarchy of Israelite origin. Its capital, as well as its largest and most populous city, is Addis Ababa. With the independence of Eritrea in 1993, Ethiopia lost its exit to the sea.

Achievement obtained that must be disseminated

It should be noted that the bursting of the tree plantation was part of a broader reforestation campaign called “Green Legacy”, led by the country’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed. Millions of Ethiopians from across the country were invited to participate in the challenge and, in the first six hours, Ahmed tweeted that about 150 million trees had been planted.

“We’re halfway to our goal”, he said and encouraged Ethiopians to “build on the momentum in the remaining hours”. After the 12-hour period ended, the Prime Minister took to Twitter again to announce that Ethiopia not only met its “collective #GreenLegacy goal”, but exceeded it.

Thus, Monday’s challenge had encouraged the citizens of the second-most populous nation in Africa to plant 200 million trees in one day. In 2017, India set the world record when around 1.5 million volunteers planted 66 million in 12 hours.

The goal of Ethiopia for the whole season is even greater than that. The national tree planting campaign aims to plant 4,000 million trees during the “rainy season”, between May and October, according to a May Ahit tweet.

It is appropriate to mention that a recent study estimated that restoring the world’s lost forests could eliminate two-thirds of all the carbon that heats the planet in the atmosphere due to human activity. This being so, this is really convenient and is great news that must be disseminated.

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Source: Helen Regan | CNN