Ethiopia breaks world record by planting over 350 million trees to fight climate change

Climate change is a dire problem plaguing the world, but Ethiopia is not going to stand around and do nothing.

The country just broke the world record by planting more than 353 million trees in 12 hours to tackle the crisis.

Part of an initiative titled, ‘Green Legacy’, the tree planting that took place on Monday was spearheaded by the country’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed. Within the first six hours, Ethiopians around the country had already planted 150 million trees.

“We’re halfway to our goal,” he said, “build on the momentum in the remaining hours.” At the end of the day, the minister of innovation and technology, Getahun Mekuria took to Twitter to share the news that a total of 353,633,660 tree seedlings had been planted.

While this may seem like a big enough victory on its own, Ethiopia’s campaign has actually set out to plant around 4 billion trees between May and October, which is the country’s rainy season. Since it is landlocked and much of its population depends on agriculture as a livelihood, the effects of climate change have hit the African country hard.

The last country to attempt a world record similar to this was India in 2017; 1.5 million volunteers planted 66 million trees in 12 hours.

BREAKING NEWS!!

ETHIOPIA PLANTED
353,633,660 TREE SEEDLINGS IN 12Hours#GreenLegacyEthiopia#PMOEthiopia pic.twitter.com/TewfqNzXMN

— Dr.-Ing. Getahun Mekuria (@DrGetahun) July 29, 2019

#GreenLegacy is a vision for the next generation. It is creating a blueprint for them and showing them the way. #GreenEthiopia #HealthyEthiopia ?? pic.twitter.com/TFudQhiAKc

— Amir Aman, MD (@amirabiy) July 29, 2019