Only two months ago, Ethiopians planted more than 350,000 trees within 12 hours, according to a Twitter announcement by their minister of innovation and technology.
This massive planting isn’t just beneficial for the environment, but also for setting a world record.
The PM, Aiby Ahmed, launched the initiative to boost the landscape of their country which is, according to experts, being eroded due to deforestation and climate change.
Breaking World Records & Helping the Planet
The goal of the country was to plant 200 million trees in a day; however, they later announced that only 353,633,660 trees were successfully planted.
The PM participated in the planting and also congratulated everyone who participated for succeeding in planting so many trees in a day.
Their bigger goal of planting 4 billion trees is being realized- they’ve planted more than 2.6 billion trees in different areas of the country. For now, less than 4 percent of the land is forested, which is a sharp decline from around 30 percent at the end of the 19th century.
Ethiopia, with aid from international organizations and the business community, hope to pass the world record of India from 2017 when they’ve planted 66 million trees in their country.
The PM explains that special software helps with the counting.
Fighting Off Climate Crisis with Trees
A recent study from Science magazine showed that planting billions of trees throughout the world is the cheapest and most beneficial method to fight off climate crisis.
Namely, since trees can absorb carbon dioxide which is a contributing factor to global warming, a global planting initiative can be helpful in the removal of emissions from the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, around 300 billion metric tons of carbon pollution has been produced in the last 25 years. The study suggests that planting trees at the size of the US could help eliminate 205 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
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