Ethiopia Sets Tree-Planting Record With 353 Million Seedlings In Under 12 Hours

"Besides planting trees, besides coming along to try and do one thing smart for our country, it had been a national unity. Everywhere, everybody was doing it - starting from very young age to the older age."

Amir Aman/Twitter

As countries around the world try to fight back against climate change, Ethiopia has just launched a campaign that certainly sets them apart from the pack. As part of the country’s Green Legacy initiative, Ethiopians planted a whopping 353 million tree seedlings nationwide in just 12 hours last week, which is believed to be a world record. In Ethiopia, millions of people across the country took part in the tree-planting efforts that far exceeded the initial goal of 200 million. “I was very sure that I don’t want to miss out, and I want to put my legacy as well on the ground,” Feben Tamrat, who planted her seedling near the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, told NPR. “Besides planting trees, besides coming together to do something good for our country, it was a national unity.

@PMEthiopia/Twitter

Ethiopia Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed plants a tree seedling during the country’s green campaign launch.

Everywhere, everyone was doing it – starting from very young age to the older age.” Even the country’s top officials got down and dirty during its race to re-forest before taking to Twitter to show off some of the newly-planted trees. “#GreenLegacy is a vision for the next generation. “It is making a diagram for them and demonstrating to them the way,” tweeted Ethiopian Minister of Wellbeing Amir Aman.” But these 350 million trees were just the beginning. According to his Twitter, the prime minister has kept up his promise to maintain the Green Legacy initiative with more communal planting in the days following the successful launch. Recently, he was joined by former president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to plant more seedlings around his administration’s compounds. The Ethiopian government plans to continue its successful tree-planting campaign with an even bigger goal in mind: They hope to plant a total of 4 billion trees before the end of the rainy season in October. In addition, more than 20 African nations have joined efforts to reforest and rehabilitate 247 million acres of land by 2030 under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative. Being part of the initiative shows the Ethiopian government’s commitment to addressing the country’s growing environmental woes. The country’s forests have shrunken down to the point that they make up only four percent of its land, down from roughly one-third about a century ago. And according to environmental experts, large replanting campaigns are our best bet to reduce carbon gas emissions. “The amount of carbon that we will restore if we tend to plant 1.1 trillion trees, or a minimum of permitthose trees to grow, would be method over ensuingbest global climate change resolution,” climate change ecologist Tom Crowther told CNN.

@PMEthiopia/Twitter
Millions of Ethiopians broke the world record after planting 353 million seedlings in below 12 hours.

And it's like mass tree planting might be future environmental trend. In 2017, India launched its own mass tree-planting campaign that set the initial record once 1.5 million volunteers planted 66 million trees in 12 hours. In Asian country, home to two of the foremost polluted cities in the world, new property owners are lawfully required to plant a minimum of 2 trees.