“In a record-breaking day this week, at the Gulele Botanical Garden in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia launched an [sic] historic tree planting campaign. Over 350 million trees were planted in an ambitious move to counter the effects of deforestation and climate change,” reported the United Nations (U.N.) Environment organization after the historic event.

#Ethiopia began its National Tree Planting compaign to plant 200M trees a day. @UNEnvironment supports the campaign 2 reach 4 billion trees as response to fight land degradation & climate change @SDG2030 #GreenLegacyEthiopia pic.twitter.com/3e91r1f32W

— UN Environment in Africa (@UNEnvironmentAf) July 29, 2019

My parents started a forestry program in #Mojo, 30 years ago during Derg, but today we planted on their land together with the whole nation, and it was one of my parent's proudest moments…and mine.
God bless #Ethiopia #GreenLegacyEthiopia pic.twitter.com/dTUR9DODcy

— Edna Alemayehu (@ednaalemayehu) July 29, 2019

We have planted six trees today at our Embassy chancery for the #GreenLegacyEthiopia record-attempt! ??#Ethiopia will plant 200 million trees in 12 hours today and recently reached the halfway mark ??#PlantYourPrint @PMEthiopia pic.twitter.com/xlWXATCKgP

— Denmark in Addis (@Denmark_Addis) July 29, 2019

“The event is part of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Green Legacy Initiative. It aimed at planting 200 million trees in a single day in 1,000 sites across the country. Prime Minister Ahmed congratulated the country for not only meeting its collective Green Legacy goal but also exceeding it,” the report continued.

“Afforestation is the most effective climate change solution to date and with the new record set by Ethiopia, other African nations should move with speed and challenge the status quo,” said Juliette Biao Koudenoukpo, Director of UN Environment’s Africa Office. She continued, “Africa has what it takes to spearhead this global push and as the most affected and vulnerable continent, climate change mitigation must be the topmost priority in the coming days. We at UN Environment are taking the lead in helping to build capacity for nations and people to apply themselves to afforestation and climate change mitigation strategies.”

As forests around the world continue to shrink, reforestation efforts have begun gaining momentum. “Our goal for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020 is to plant 7.8 billion trees, one for every person on earth,” said the Earth Day Network (EDN) whose mission is to “diversify, educate, and activate the environmental movement worldwide.”

EDN continues, “Deforestation is the second leading cause of global warming and produces about 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Scientist say that deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum total of all the cars and trucks on the world’s roads. In some countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, deforestation and forest degradation together are by far the main source of national greenhouse gas emissions.”