🌳 Ethiopia planted 350 million trees - in 12 hours

India has been holding the record for most trees planted in a single day. The record was 50 million trees and has not been broken, until two years ago, according to BBC. In July 2019 Ethiopia announced that the country planted over 350 million trees during a 12 hour period.

The project is called Green Legacy Initiative and aims to “curb and counter the negative impact of deforestation and climate change in drought-prone regions”, reported by Interesting Engineering.

More than 23 million Ethiopians participated in the tree planting. Government officials and private businesses also joined together with staff and representatives from the United Nations, the African Union, and the Diplomatic Corps.

In May 2021, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed presented the 2021 edition of the Green Legacy Initiative that will continue until September and October this year. This year, the country aims to plant six billion seedlings. This year's tree planting efforts is themed “Let’s Adorn Ethiopia” Ethiopian Embassy U.K. reported. The Prime Minister said:

"Preventing flooding, food insecurity, environment-related conflicts, and other adverse effects is in our hands."

In the first two years of the project over 10 billion trees were planted. The aim is to plant 20 billion trees altogether by 2022.  

This tree planting campaign is not the only thing Ethiopia intends to do. The Government plans to launch a regional effort to make the whole continent of Africa a greener place, as an expansion of the initiative. One billion seeds will be shipped to neighbouring nations this year.

🗳 Since democracy is crucial in a fact-based optimistic world... we remind our readers of the democratic status of the countries we write about:

Ethiopia has a Global Freedom Score of 22 and has the status Not free.