Original title: in order to cope with drought and climate change, the country worked hard and planted 353 million trees in 12 hours
In 2017, India set a world record. About 1.5 million volunteers planted 66 million trees in 12 hours. Now this record has been greatly refreshed again.
On Monday, Ethiopia planted 353 million trees in 12 hours, which local officials believe is a new world record. This wave of tree planting boom is the country's prime minister Abby & middot; Ahmed led a broader afforestation campaign called 'green Legacy'. Millions of Ethiopians across the country were invited to take part in the challenge. Ahmed said about 150 million trees had been planted in the first six hours. This activity is a positive action taken by the country to combat the consequences of deforestation, drought and climate change.
He said: 'we have achieved half our goal'. He also encouraged Ethiopians to continue their efforts in the remaining hours. After 12 hours, the Ethiopian Prime Minister announced on the Internet again that Ethiopia had not only achieved the collective goal of "green heritage activities", but also exceeded this goal. The event encouraged 100 million residents of Africa's second most populous country to plant 200 million trees a day. In fact, the residents of the country planted 353633660 saplings in 12 hours. Ethiopia's goal for the whole season is far greater than 300 million trees. According to the news released by Ahmed in May, the national tree planting campaign plans to plant 4 billion trees during the rainy season from May to October.
According to farm Africa, an organization dedicated to afforestation in East Africa and helping farmers get rid of poverty, less than 4% of Ethiopia's land was covered by forests, compared with about 30% at the end of the 19th century. The landlocked country is also affected by climate change, such as land degradation, soil erosion, deforestation and repeated droughts and floods exacerbated by agriculture. 80% of Ethiopia's population lives on agriculture, and due to global climate change, the country has been facing the crisis of drought and little rain for many years. The United Nations says 3.8 million people in the country are in urgent need of assistance.
In 2017, Ethiopia joined more than 20 African countries and pledged to restore 100 million hectares of land as part of the African forest landscape restoration initiative. A recent study estimates that restoring the world's lost forests can eliminate two-thirds of all the carbon in the atmosphere that causes global warming due to human activities. A study conducted by researchers at the Federal Institute of technology in Zurich, Switzerland, believes that the restoration of degraded forests around the world can capture a total of about 205 billion tons of carbon, while the current global annual carbon emissions are about 10 billion tons.
Since the industrial revolution, human activities have led to the addition of about 300 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere and the global warming. Trees naturally have the ability to absorb carbon dioxide and store it on the ground and underground. According to the research data of the University of Zurich, global tree restoration is the most effective way to deal with climate change. Nevertheless, we still can not take carbon emission reduction lightly, control carbon dioxide emissions from the source, coupled with the transformation of the natural environment, we can have a healthy earth environment.