‘I see them like my own children’: reforesting Ethiopia with 50bn trees, one step at a time — SkimNews
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- Halima Kedir, 35, of Berbere in Oromia, has planted thousands of trees after initial mockery from neighbors, who now call her a role model and draw parallels to the Oromo tradition of guddifachaa (child adoption).
- Ethiopia's annual deforestation rate fell from 92,000 hectares in 2013 to 27,703 hectares in 2023, with forest cover rising from 15.5% to 23.6% over the same period, though the country still lost 560,000 hectares of tree cover from 2000 to 2025.
- The government-backed Green Legacy Initiative (GLI), launched in 2019, claims 48bn trees planted in seven years — including a reported 353m seedlings in a single day — with a target of 50bn by 2030.
- Researchers who examined 15 tree-planting schemes in Ethiopia found 10 achieved less than 50% success, undercutting government claims of 79%–83.4% seedling survival; UN Environment Programme coordinator Yitebitu Moges says a systematic assessment is now under way.
- WaterAid Ethiopia has distributed approximately 55,000 indigenous tree seedlings in the Berbere area, with 85% reportedly growing successfully, as Kedir walks an hour to fetch water to keep her own seedlings alive.
- Ethiopia's parliament established a fund allocating 0.5%–1% of its 2.339tn birr annual federal budget (roughly £50m–£110m) to landscape restoration, and the country will host Cop32 in Addis Ababa in November 2027.
Why it matters: The GLI's 48bn-tree figure is a cornerstone of Ethiopia's pitch to host Cop32 in 2027, but if researchers are right that most Ethiopian reforestation schemes fall below 50% survival, the headline number masks an uncertain carbon and resilience claim — and the country's 130 million people, in one of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations, are counting on those trees to actually take root.
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