Enormously great achievement! Far beyond its plan and the existing world’s record, Ethiopia planted more than 353 million trees in 12 hours. The national plan was to plant 200 million trees in a day. Astonishingly, yesterday’s green campaign has enabled the nation to break the world record in its contribution to tackle climate change.
Before yesterday, world record for planting trees in a single day had been held by India, which mobilized 800,000 volunteers to plant more than 66 million trees in 2016. As a record-breaker is expected to accomplish far great achievement, Ethiopia, mobilizing 23 million peoples, has moved the record foreword to a certain distance where competition does not exist: From 66 million trees to 353.6 million trees per day.
The nation’s current leadership has boldly demonstrated determination, extraordinary skills and commitment in order to make the green campaign fruitful. Realizing what it takes to be a record-holder, Ethiopia has achieved the record that has significantly been improved from the existing one.
Truly, this astounding deed of the nation is a great contribution for the world in tackling the global warming. As the project led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the campaign which took place in more than 1,000 sites across the country aimed at tackling the effects of deforestation and climate change in a sustainable manner besides its inevitable immense contribution to the global campaign.
Though investing in green development has become recent global issue, it has been a custom for Ethiopians to plant trees and count themselves as stewards of environment since ancient times. For instance, among 600 articles in the Geda System, 16 of them are dealing with environmental protection. Because of this long-standing custom, Ethiopia has used a global movement like the Paris Climate Summit as an important platform to showcase the steps it has taken in pursuing green economic development.
For about a couple of decades, its achievements in policy of pursuing non-renewable energy, including hydropower, wind energy and geothermal energy, Ethiopia has invested a great deal in its energy saving technology, water and the expansion of carbon free transport services. In making sure that almost all of its energy comes from renewable bases with hydropower as the main source, it has continued working relentlessly to boost the potential of the sources. And this green campaign is part of this endeavor.
When Ethiopia as a developing nation that has very little contribution to the global warming has provided such great solution, it is logical that the developed economies will be encouraged to finance such renewable projects so that efforts of adopting strategies for low carbon emissions, as well as poverty alleviation and sustainable development will be realized.
Though some previous climate negotiations have not been realized so far, Ethiopia, pursuing its Green Economy Policy, has achieved considerable success in the last some years. And it has managed to raise the forest land cover from about 4 percent of the total land in the 1990s to about 15 percent. This indisputably necessitates the developed nations to provide Ethiopia both financial and technical support so that it will continue its fight on climate change effectively.
In short, Ethiopia’s achievement in green economy is the best indication that the global warming can surely be curbed through investing high-quality green development. Its commitment invites more global campaign to tackle the problem. Ethiopia has effectively played its enormous role and the hope is the international community will act soon.
The Ethiopian Herald July 30/2019
