By Coletta Wanjohi
On a balmy July day in 2019, Ethiopia planted a staggering 350 million saplings in a record-breaking show of commitment and endurance.
The backstory to this mass tree plantation is of loss and pain. As per estimates of the United Nations, forest cover in Ethiopia had fallen to just 4 percent in the 2000s, down from 35 percent a century earlier.
These numbers and visible signs of growing climate crisis – droughts, crop failures and heatwaves – spurred the nation into action.
Many other African nations took the Ethiopian experiment of mass tree plantation to combat the adverse affects of climate change, population growth and unsustainable land management practices.
It will turn out to be a long-drawn battle for the world’s second-most populous continent.
Trees to the rescue
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said East Africa, including the Horn of Africa region, are experiencing a protracted drought, with the 6th season of below-average rainfall expected to aggravate food insecurity.
In parts of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, the dry spell is the longest and most severe in recent history and is affecting over 47 million people, it says.
In November last year, humanitarian agencies warned that the below-average rainfall is likely to continue during the March-May season in 2023. They termed the dry spell in the region “a humanitarian catastrophe”.
In its January 2023 assessment, Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority described last year’s October-December short rain period as poor. Coupled with four consecutive failed rainfall seasons, the drought situation in parts of the country remains critical, it added.
The authority estimated that over 4.4 million people might require assistance in 2023.
As the biting impacts of climate change started to manifest, Kenya last year embarked on mass tree planting to arrest the ecological degradation.
In December, President William Ruto launched a National Tree Growing and Land Restoration Campaign that aims to plant 15 billion trees by 2032.
“If each one of us would play their part, it only translates to 300 trees per Kenyan in 10 years and 30 trees per year per Kenyan,” the cabinet secretary of Environment and Forestry said at the launch. Ethiopia continued on the path it chose in 2019.
“Four years into the implementation of the Green Legacy Initiative, we have mobilised 25 million Ethiopians across the nation to plant 25 billion seedlings, equivalent to 250 seedlings per Ethiopian,” prime minister Abiy Ahmed told COP27 held in Egypt last year.
Nurturing nature
The United Nations Environment Programme office (UNEP) says that restoring degraded ecosystems can yield steady improvements over long timeframes.
Levis Kavagi, the Coordinator for the Ecosystems and Biodiversity Programme at the UNEP Programme office for Africa, told TRT Afrika that afforestation and reforestation are important processes of recapturing carbon dioxide and storing it into vegetative cover.
“The effectiveness of afforestation and reforestation would depend on the extent of coverage. The larger the better. Isolated woodlots have limited capacity to provide the needed regulation of micro and macro climates of a region. At appropriate scale forests contribute to climate regulation, and to the hydrological cycle of the region,” Kavagi says.
He adds that trees are most likely to thrive in places where they used to grow.
“For this reason, it is best to plant trees in former natural ecosystems where there are less chance of introducing invasive species. Secondly, native species are adapted to the local climate and soil and are likely to support far more biodiversity than exotic species. Once established, native trees will reproduce naturally.”
Muhammed Lamin SaidyKhan of Climate Action Network (CAN) said that in drought-affected areas, tree-planting must be done gradually. Climate Action Network is a global network of civil society organisations fighting the climate crisis.
“There are drought survival trees that you can start within drought areas. Then when you get the environment to be greener, then it will allow all forms of trees to be planted.”
Lamin emphasised that for national tree-planting initiatives to be sustainable, governments must allocate budgets for them and encourage direct community engagement.
UNEP, however, cautioned that multiple mistakes had been made in restoring forests and planting trees.
“For instance, using inappropriate species and methods, at inappropriate locations, and without full collaboration between practitioners, scientists, and local people, as a result, both people and nature have suffered encroachment of invasive species in some instances,” explained Kavagi from UNEP.
“All ecosystems from savannahs to wetlands, from the peaks of mountains to the depths of the ocean – provide valuable functions and harbour unique biodiversity. Planting trees on natural grassland may destroy more than it creates.”
