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Guess the Country: Country claims to plant more than 350 million trees in 12 hours to combat climate change


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The only way to really guess is to know about the pledge nearly a couple dozen African countries made on restoring their forests. If you knew about this, well done.

 

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The burst of tree planting was part of a wider reforestation campaign named "Green Legacy," spearheaded by the country's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Millions of Ethiopians across the country were invited to take part in the challenge and within the first six hours, Ahmed tweeted that around 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.

 

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According to Farm Africa, an organization working on reforestation efforts in East Africa and helping farmers out of poverty, less than 4% of Ethiopia's land is forested, compared to around 30% at the end of the 19th century.


The landlocked country is also suffering from the effects of climate crisis, with land degradation, soil erosion, deforestation, and recurrent droughts and flooding exacerbated by agriculture. Eighty percent of Ethiopia's population depends on agriculture as a livelihood.


In 2017, Ethiopia joined more than 20 other African nations in pledging to restore 100 million hectares of land as part of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative.


A recent study estimated that restoring the world's lost forests could remove two thirds of all the planet-warming carbon that is in the atmosphere because of human activity.

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49151523

 

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Staff from the United Nations, African Union and foreign embassies in Ethiopia have also been taking part in the exercise.
 

The current World Record for planting trees in a single day is held by India, which used 800,000 volunteers to plant more than 50 million trees in 2016.

 

Critics of Mr Abiy say he is using the campaign to distract the public from the challenges his government is facing, including ethnic conflicts which have forced some 2.5 million people from their homes.

 

Regardless as to if the number is inflated (I saw a BBC editor question the minister as to how to confirm and how many people took part), these kind of initiatives are nice to see. I wasn't even aware of the one in India.

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