Braving a heavy downpour, hundreds of farmers last year spent a full day planting 20,000 acacia seedlings on a barren hillside outside the town of Buee in southern Ethiopia.
They were responding to a call in July last year from Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who wanted his compatriots to plant 200 million trees in a single day, shattering the world record.
However, while the farmers had “great expectations,” they said that nearly a year later — as Ethiopia yesterday prepared to celebrate World Environment Day — the results in Buee are a disappointment.
Photo: AFP
Rainfall immediately washed away more than one-third of the seedlings, and those that remain have struggled to grow out of hastily dug holes filled with poor soil, local environment official Ewnatu Kornen said.
The farmers’ ordeal points to the potential pitfalls of mass planting drives, which are central to Abiy’s “Green Legacy” campaign to promote ecotourism and transform Ethiopia into an environmentally friendly economy.
About 353 million seedlings — 153 million more than the initial goal — went into the ground nationwide in last year’s day-long mass planting, official figures showed.
That was a mere fraction of the 4 billion trees reportedly planted in the entire rainy season last year, which in Ethiopia runs from June to September.
This year’s mass planting has yet to be scheduled, but Abiy had declared that yesterday would be the launch of a push for 5 billion new trees to be planted this rainy season.
Outside Ethiopia, debate has swirled over the credibility of these eye-popping figures.
Yet, local experts have said that there are more important questions: Has the planting been properly organized and has there been enough follow-up to keep the trees alive?
“It’s not really about the numbers,” said Negash Teklu, head of a group of non-governmental organizations known as the Population Health & Environment Ethiopia Consortium. “It’s about the effectiveness of the tree-planting scheme.”
Last month, Abiy announced that 84 percent of the 4 billion trees planted last year had survived, crediting “extensive caretaking work” throughout the year.
No known independent studies have been conducted.
However, Negash, who stressed that he broadly supports Abiy’s tree-planting agenda, expressed concern that the survival rate was “highly exaggerated.”
“They were not considering how the community can be owners of the process. It was more random: ‘Oh, we will plant,’” Negash said of last year’s effort.
This was apparent in the capital, Addis Ababa, where some residents planted ornamental trees in wild forests outside the city center, while others placed large trees in the medians of busy streets — where they had no chance of survival.
Going forward, officials must do a better job on seedling placement, as well as explaining to people how afforestation will improve their lives, Negash said.
“It shouldn’t be a one-day campaign that happens every year. It should be an approach that really engages every citizen wherever they are” year-round, he added.
Belaynesh Zewdie, a forestry expert with the UN Development Programme in Buee, has seen firsthand how projects that lack community buy-in can go awry.
In the late 1980s, under the communist Derg regime, she was involved in a scheme to plant 1 million acacia trees in northern Amhara Region.
However, the scheme was top-down and “forced,” and once the regime fell in 1991, angry residents cleared the trees to plow the land, she said.
In the past several years, Belaynesh has worked on a plantation and rehabilitation project in Buee that tries to deliver immediate and concrete benefits to those living nearby.
Part of the project’s protected area lies in a watershed, so she has constructed ponds that offer herders an alternative water source for their cattle.
She has also given residents eucalyptus seedlings to plant near their homes so they are not tempted to cut down the project’s acacia and silky oak trees.
Meanwhile, the project’s nursery employs 17 local women who earn about US$50 per month — a tidy sum for the region.
The result — hectares upon hectares of green, thriving trees — illustrates what can be achieved “if you discuss with the community, if the community accepts you,” Belaynesh said.
“Within this very short period of time, you can make a lot of difference,” she said. “I myself, I am impressed still every time I come here and I see it. It’s unbelievable.”
Despite imposing a state of emergency in April because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Abiy remains determined to meet this year’s goal of planting 5 billion trees.
“Last year, we each committed to the national call and met our set target,” Abiy wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, urging Ethiopians to aim for a repeat performance “in a physically distanced manner.”
As the country looks ahead to a yet-to-be-scheduled general election, officials hope that the initiative can help bridge ethnic and political divides and “unite our people,” said Sileshi Degefa, director of the Gullele Botanical Garden in Addis Ababa.
At the same time, they are determined to improve on last year’s planting effort so more trees stay standing, he said.
“This year we’ve got enough lessons from the previous one, so I hope we will plant the right species in the right place,” Sileshi said, but added that “with such big programs, we don’t expect perfection.”
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