Covid-19 and Ethiopia’s Green Legacy
It is estimated that Africa is losing more than four million hectares (9.9 million acres) of forest every year, which is twice the global average deforestation rate. In 2019, Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Dr. Abiy Ahmed, launched the ambitious #GreenLegacy campaign, with the goal of restoring degraded land by planting four billion trees.
During this year's celebrations of World Environment Day on June 5, Prime Minister Ahmed launched a follow-up initiative, whose aim is to plant another five billion trees. In order to reach as much of the population as possible, the campaign has employed a number of creative communication tools, such as releasing a ringtone with a message on the importance of planting trees, voiced by the Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, more than 24,000 nurseries across the country have been busy raising seedlings to meet the expected in preparation for the campaign. Seedlings raised by farmers will also be planted. In order to ensure action in urban areas as well, the campaign included arrangements for distribution of seedlings through the sub-city (Wereda)offices.
The planned scaling up of the campaign has, however, been affected by the continued spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike the first mass planting event that saw more than 200 million trees planted in a 12 hour period, this time, smaller tree planting events were held in line with the social distancing rules. There was also less demand than expected in urban areas due to fears of contacting the virus.
Planting trees for resilience
Even before the recent concerted efforts, the culture of tree planting has been ingrained in most parts of the country. In the past, however, most people bought and planted the seedlings available locally, such as Weyera, Bottlebrush, and Girar. In light of concerns about access to food during the pandemic, there have been calls for planting more fruit trees to meet the three objectives of boosting food security and health, expanding farmers' income options, and fighting land degradation.
Avocado production is one area that shows promise for meeting these interrelated objectives. Ethiopia is currently ranked the 6th largest avocado producer in the world. As part of the tree planting campaign, more than 600,000 grafted avocado seedlings have been earmarked for sale to farmers. One of the new avocado farmers explained that he is interested in the crop because he will make more money. He plans to grow vegetables in between the rows of avocado to ensure he also has sufficient food. “This needs to be implemented to the urban areas as well,” he stresses. “People have already seen the strain that Covid made from farm to fork.”
Written by Yared Tesema
This article is part of Covid-19 Food/Future, an initiative under TMG ThinkTank for Sustainability’s SEWOH Lab project (https://www.tmg-thinktank.com/sewoh-lab). It aims at providing a unique and direct insight into the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on national and local food systems. Also follow @CovidFoodFuture, our Video Diaries From Nairobi, and @TMG_think on Twitter. Funding for this initiative is provided by BMZ, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
