The rainy season will soon knock at the door to announce its return. The month of Ginbot in Amharic (June) is the last sunny month of the year according to the Ethiopian calendar. It may even be the warmest month depending on a particular year and weather conditions in general. The first thing that comes to our mind is the availability of water, farming, and, in third place, tree planting, not at individual levels but also as a onetime national passion that now seems almost sidelined.
Readers may ask the following question: How can we think about tree planting at this particular time when conditions are not ideal for this kind of activity? How dare you bring up tree planting as a national issue while there are so many things that claim our attention? True to the global trend, life is difficult for most of us these days. High cost of living, food shortages, security problems in the north here, you name it. Tree planting has never been a consuming passion for the entire country. Most of the tree planting took place mainly in rural areas, among the farming community.
There are also existential issues at stake here. Ethiopia is one of the few countries in Africa, if not in the world, that is vulnerable to droughts and famines of Biblical proportions. Professor Pankhurst, the eminent British historian who studied the history of famine in our country, has documented the recurrence of large-scale hunger in the north of the county in particular, starting from the 19th century until now.
Back in 2021, when the national forestation drive had reached its climax and passions were running high for the conservation of nature, I remember writing an article about the hype that surrounded the event. “Ethiopia’s record tree-planting campaign to plant 200,000 tree seedlings in 24 hours deserves appreciation and a place of honor in the annals of environmental protection. As we remember it, there was no single country that had planted so many tree seedlings in one day. India, with its billion people, planted a little more than 60 million seedlings within a day. Compare this to the more than 350 tree seedlings planted last Monday across the length and breadth of the nation. The Guinness Book of World Records, which gives attention to unusual accomplishments, should this time bend its rules and dedicate a page to this unprecedented event.
“Recognizing Ethiopia’s achievement would not only be an honor to the tens of millions of ordinary people who have participated in the campaign. It would also serve as an inspiration to many countries, that, like Ethiopia, suffer some of the most devastating climatic crises that are shaking the world leading to droughts, food shortages and diseases.”
Ethiopia was given a space in the Guinness World Records for that year as a country that has taken reforestation as its new culture. Felicitations were pouring in from environmental advocates, NGOs, and other environmental agencies. Five years along the line, the hype is gone, the passion has evaporated, the pride has disappeared, and the promises have disappeared, and now, as the next rainy season is approaching, we do not know what to do with it. What happened to a country that was boasting about its records and vowed to maintain the momentum at any time and emerge perhaps as the nation with the largest forest area in the world following the Amazon forest? Where is all that hope now? It is nowhere to be seen, just after only four years.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that our vow to create a new forestation culture has now turned into a culture of silence, indifference and forgetfulness. Where are all our environmental campaigners who were telling us that tree planting should be a generational promise and a national heritage? Only four years down the road, our vision is no more and our promises remain unfulfilled. We don’t care about trees, about water about the environment and sometimes, about life itself. A kind of national amnesia seems to have taken us hostages. The relevant authorities who shouted from the rooftops about the virtues of tree planting are now largely silent as they are absorbed by other priorities.
Nevertheless Tree planting or forests had always been part of our history. The first thing emperor Menelik’s did upon coming to Addis was to order his subject or encourage them to plant trees and promote forestation. Trees supplied the basic material for house construction at that time and rivers provided drinking water that was cleaner than the piped water we are using nowadays and whose cleanness is a big question mark as the pipes are leaking and the purity of drinking water is compromised.
Tree planting has a very long history dating back to at least 500 years if we take modern tree planting as our starting point. We can go farther in time and refer to a still older time when selecting and breeding fruit trees and other non-wood products around the world and transferring them has a history of more than 4000 years. “The skill of tree planting has been around for a very long time. The ancient civilizations had gardens and orchards into which they transplanted trees that bore useful crops or those that could be clipped into hedges, or those which were values for their shade or beauty.”
The 2021 national tree planting initiative was understandable. As I wrote in this same newspaper at that time that Ethiopia’s obsession with tree planting, could be understood from the long history of droughts and famines that claimed millions of lives and left the country at the mercy of climate change that exacerbated the process of desertification. There was no drought in Ethiopia in 2021 but the initiative was massive.
Furthermore the 1921 initiative was triggered by the general atmosphere of renewal and the need for the government to unite the people around a common and popular vision. Drought had remained Ethiopia’s number one enemy for many decades and it was time to defeat this enemy and eradicate it once and for all. The general climate was conducive for this kind of initiative.
According to available information, the question why Ethiopia was undertaking a massive tree planting drive at that particular time could be answered in the following terms. “The call to plant more trees is part of Ethiopia’s national “Green Legacy” initiative which according to the government’s office, aims to tackle deforestation and the effects of climate change by educating Ethiopians on the environmental and planting different “eco-friendly seedlings.”
In our time, we have witnessed at least three large-scale famines. The first one occurred in the 1970s and was popularly known as the Wollo drought or famine that decimated entire regions in the province, leading to massive population migration, the destruction of arable lands and cattle. The 1984-85 famine in Ethiopia was a global concern that left more than a million people dead in its wake. That was also a turning point in the history of drought and famine in the country. There was also another large-scale drought and famine back in the 1990s and was the inspiration behind the national initiative for large-scale tree planting in order to withstand the ravages of drought.
The need for large-scale tree planting initiatives at the national level as a critical step in environmental protection was accorded a clear and urgent focus right after the 1984-85 drought and famine that hit entire regions in northern Ethiopia. This tragic event shocked not only the rural population but also the military government that was embarked on a course of transforming agriculture along socialist What is known in history as the Wollo and Tigray drought and famine had contributed to the toppling of the imperial government in the 1974 popular revolution that was focused on land reform and on improving the lives of the rural communities in general.
The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is now almost complete. Back in 2021, it was another trigger that accelerated the urge to plant more than 20 billion trees in the subsequent years, and this trend is continuing with greater pace as trees have become critical for the ecological survival of Ethiopia, which is increasingly becoming vulnerable to climate change. The authorities also vowed to carry the initiative around the GERD to maintain a balanced ecosystem in order to promote agricultural activities along the tributaries. Slowing the pace of this initiative was unacceptable.
As we remember now, decisions were made at the highest levels of government. Forests were rightly considered the symbols of Ethiopia’s cultural, economic, and spiritual wealth or revival. Unfortunately, this initiative is now largely forgotten. As the culture of tree planting was not based on solid foundations, it started to crumble as soon as the passions and emotions died down and national attention turned to other urgent matters.
Fighting drought and famine in Ethiopia is not a matter to be addressed in an ad hoc manner. We need permanent institutions and continued commitment and follow-up. Ethiopia’s greatest challenge is the established practice of doing things on the basis of campaigns, temporary infatuations that tend to fizzle out as soon as solutions are still under trial. There is no consistency and the patience to work hard until any problem is at least half solved. We had many campaigns in the past, but none of them enjoyed continued attention, as they were not institutionalized and required financial resources and manpower training for the job. Almost all the new initiatives disappeared as soon as they were launched. The country is now bracing to celebrate the inauguration of GERD, which is a legitimate source of pride for the people.
Yet, the 2021 pledge to do forestation or climate work around the dam still remains an unfulfilled promise. Making mistakes is human, but the worst blunder is not to talk about past commitments, make honest appraisals, and make corrections to resume the work. It seems that the nation is waiting for another drought and another famine to wake up from its long slumber. Are we sure that we have overcome drought and famine definitively? What if they return some day in the future? This cannot be ruled out because we are still hard hit by hidden droughts and hidden famines and chronic food shortages or hidden famines.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 11 JUNE 2025