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Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change

389 points by auntienomen 7y ago

treii28 7y ago
math is hard..... ok, I've been over this on another thread. The average forest density in the United States is 5500 trees per acre. So 353 million trees equals about 64182 acres of equivalent US forest. This sounds impressive, but that equals 100 square miles. A square 10 miles by 10 miles in size. For a little more perspective, Ethiopia is 426,400 square miles in land mass. This means they planted the equivalent of 0.02% of their land mass with trees vs the forest density of the typical US forest. (for the record, those evil guys that cut down trees for profit, plant 52 million trees per year every year in the US) Meanwhile, as per the 353 million-in-a-day estimate: let's say for sake of argument that the average person can manage to plant one tree per minute and they are working an 8 hour shift with no breaks, pauses, distractions or complications. That's close to half-a-million people to cover all three shifts in a single day. And that's with generous assumptions. The Ethiopian government says that they expect a single volunteer to be able to plant 100 trees in a day. Which means if the 350 million in a day is accurate, they had 3.5 million volunteers. Call me suspicious of such an ambitious estimate. with a little more digging, to their credit, these 350 million trees are just the latest on a re-forestation project that now boasts 2.6 billion trees planted since it began. But math again, that equates to 739 square miles of equivalent US forest (less than 0.2% of the total land mass of Ethiopia or an equivalent square of 27 miles on a side of typical US forest. That's just over half the size of the state of Rhode Island or about the size of Washtenaw county, MI where I live. Tt their ultimate goal is to plant 4 billion trees total before the project is finished. Admirable indeed. But, I did find figures on my home state of Michigan for comparison. While I have yet to find a number on the total number of trees before the reforestation in Ethiopia, I can guess based on the decline of 25% cited and the goal of 4 billion trees total. ((4/25) * 15) = 2.4 (billion) for a total of 6.4 billion trees assuming their desire is to re-achieve the 40% number from a century ago. Estimates for the state of Michigan are a total of 13.5 billion trees across the entire state. That's more than twice the assumed 'final goal' for the entire country of Ethiopia. Oh, should I mention the land area of Ethiopia is 4 1/2 times more than that of the state of Michigan? Other things worthy of consideration which I noticed while digging. Many areas of Michigan were clear cut in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (i.e. about the same timeline as the de-forestation in Ethiopia) To be fair, some of the areas cut were re-forested by WPA government work programs in the 1930s. But not all. The reports I was pulling my figures from were actually surveys done by the state government for the purpose of evaluating potential future timber cutting, and they noted a large number of hardwoods (oaks, maples, elm, etc) in those numbers (most of the wpa planted trees were pine trees) and a growing quantity of older trees as a percentage of the total. aka "old growth" or mature forests.
keeganjw 7y ago
What an incredible feat! A heroic effort for reforestation.
- auntienomen 7y ago
  It makes it seem like planting the trillion trees we'd need to arrest climate change might not be out of reach.
sriram_malhar 7y ago
How were they watered the next week?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- scotty79 7y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=weather+in+ethiopia https://www.google.com/search?q=weather+in+ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ethiopia#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ethiopia#Climate
- isostatic 7y ago
  Ethipoia, and Africa as a whole, is not Band Aid. Addis Ababa gets more rainfall each year than Washington state.
  - sriram_malhar 7y ago
    What Band Aid? I'm talking of the mechanics of keeping 350 million trees alive. That takes effort, and a lot more area besides Addis Ababa. I'm inclined to disbelieve these numbers unless I see some trustworthy non-govt source. Everyone's quoting the minister.
    - dgacmu 7y ago
      Band Aid in this case refers to a charity fundraising effort started in the 1980s to combat famine in Ethiopia. It included some misleading lyrics in its headliner song: > Lyrics of the song included description of the country saying, "where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow..." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_Aid_(band) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_Aid_(band)
      - swish_bob 7y ago
        It was a response to an immense drought in Ethiopia (largely the result of deforestation). They had years with almost no rain. It really wasn't misleading with respect to the situation at the time.
aaron695 7y ago
So, this is junk obviously. But the question is.... Were any tree's planted at all? Is it 100% propaganda? If they said 300 million but if it was 50 million, fair enough. Close enough. Equalling India a more developed, stable country 13 times the size would be amazing, unbelievable even, a point of change for Ethiopia, they should get the record. But I think it'll be zero. Not 10 million, not 1 million, zero (~Less than 100,000). [edit] I'll raise my estimate to 1 million, I was wrong on zero, there are some first hand reports of some structure and some people did actually planted some trees https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/cjfqu5/about_350m_trees_have_been_planted_in_a_single/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/cjfqu5/about_35... [edit] hashtags of a few very chaotic scenes, at 10 million trees planted I'd expect one aerial view of around 10,000 trees planted somewhere - https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=PlantOurPrint https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=PlantOurPrint https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E1%8A%A0%E1%88%A8%E1%8A%95%E1%8C%8F%E1%8B%B4%E1%8A%A0%E1%88%BB%E1%88%AB?src=hash https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E1%8A%A0%E1%88%A8%E1%8A%95%E1%8... This is a know propaganda move from the government, what's in question is if they did it (They didn't) to divert the mood of the people, or mostly made it up.
oblio 7y ago
I wish them luck. I'm a sort of history buff and Ethiopia has an amazing history. It's been a state (in various forms and with different names) for more than 2000 years, in a part of the world where such stability has been scarce. It has its own ancient alphabet. It was the only country in Africa to resist the Scramble for Africa and was only occupied by Italy for less than 10 years (after putting the Italian Army to shame initially... and it was only occupied because it got almost 0 outside help). This seems like an awesome initiative, but they will need a lot of help. Their population went from 70 million in 2007 to 100 million in 2017. The current forecast is for about 200 million by 2050. I hope they grow peacefully and without internal conflicts, Africa desperately needs a pole of stability and prosperity in the region. It's going to be a tough struggle for them!
- bloemy 7y ago
  Have you by any chance read the book "Dictatorland" by Paul Kenyon? If you haven't, you'll love it. Anyways, another incredible history if Eritrea, and their common history with Ethiopia is pretty crazy too. One of those countries the world really knows nothing about...
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  I wouldn't say it's that stable or that the rest of Africa is instable, especially compared to Europe. It's just that Europe industrialized earlier and got to reap rewards that can only come from most simple needs being met easily. In general, the developing countries are mostly "behind the curve", meaning their economic growth mostly wasn't that much lower for most of history, but rather they started somewhat later, often because they needed the technology developed in the west (modern agriculture mostly) to start increasing their population density. As far as I understand it, Africa is suitable for both very primitive and very advanced agriculture, but not much "in between" and so they got stuck with hunting/gathering and subsistence farming. They also didn't have access to proper domestic animals before Europe industrialized, though they had better animals than the South Americans, apparently. Neither a LLama nor a zebra can pull a plow. Many countries in Africa were jumpstarted by colonization, and the colonists didn't have any interest in making that growth sustainable or giving the natives the tools to sustain that growth on their own. That's why white African farmers can say the black Africans can't manage huge farms for sh. Well, the white farmers didn't teach it to them and prevented them from learning it on their own... Ethiopia is probably slightly different.
lmilcin 7y ago
Not to discourage, but even reforesting entire land that could possibly be covered in forest will not arrest climate change noticeably. The reason is because forest do not change CO2 levels noticeably, in the long run. The reason is because there is roughly constant amount of carbon in Earths biomass. Planting treas only increases the amonut of biomass by a little bit but has no lasting effect of scrubbing CO2 from atmosphere. The real solution to climate change is undoing decades of constant addition of CO2 to atmosphere. This requires not only scrubbing CO2 from atmosphere but also sequestering the carbon somehow which means preventing it getting back to carbon cycle. If you really wanted to make planting trees have an effect you would not only need to plant trees, you would need to regularly cut them (before they burn) and store them somewhere, maybe at the bottom of ocean, from where it will not be released (decomposed, burned, etc.) Of course, planting trees have other beneficial effects like helping to keep rainwater. It is just important to make sure right kinds of trees (and large variety of them!) are planted to not repeat mistakes that were made in other places.
- luesterklemme 7y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting... ETH Zürich seems to disagree with that statement.
  - lmilcin 7y ago
    The Guardian seems to disagree with you. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/01/negative-emissions-tech-climate-emergency-carbon-dioxide-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/01/negati...
  - lmilcin 7y ago
    Well, humanity uses around 15 billion tonnes of coal and oil and gas every year. At that speed, in just 30 years, we add as much carbon to the atmosphere as entire biomass of Earth.
- abraae 7y ago
jordn 7y ago
Is there any proof or details of how they did this? 350,000,000 is a lot of trees to source, distribute and plant in one day.
- nottorp 7y ago
  They only planted them in one day. I bet the distribution took a while...
  - thinkingemote 7y ago
    The article gives no details but I'd look to see how many things are planted from seed in a nursery each day to at least get an indication of the number of things which can be "planted" in a given day. Many trees could be said to have been planted by someone scattering apple seeds out of their pockets.
    - nottorp 7y ago
      The article says something about 40 trees planted by each citizen... so I'm guessing this 350 M batch was distributed equally to everyone they could reach.
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  Planting a tree is as easy as planting a tiny seed in the ground. What all these headlines omit is that the majority of things planted won't survive. My back yard has a few thousand tree seedlings growing in it naturally. When we hear of tree planting we picture a mayor or rich person planting a four year old tree in a park. The reality is that trees grow from seed. In the case of commercial forestry all the trees planted won't make it. A better vision of tree planting is Johnny Appleseed. Edits. The Twitter from the Ethiopian minister says tree seedlings.
  - taneq 7y ago
    > When we hear of tree planting we picture a mayor or rich person planting a four year old tree in a park. The reality is that trees grow from seed. Yeah but trees are hardline r-strategists and produce millions of disposable seeds with a very low survival rate. Planting a seed is in no way equivalent to planting a germinated, sprouted, and developed seedling.
iam_varunnair 7y ago
This is inspiring!
chewz 7y ago
Tommorrow's headlines - Goats in Ethiopia have eaten 350 million trees. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zctymnb/revision/4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zctymnb/revision/4 http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/importance-goats-east-africas-recovery-drought/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/importance-goats-east-africas...
mikece 7y ago
I'm not a botanist, but if they are experiencing drought then how will these newly planted trees survive? According to the article they are so low on water they are slashing output on their hydro-power system and ceasing electricity exports.
- giarc 7y ago
  Also not a botanist but often places could experience drought because they have cleared the land and the water runs off to river/ocean. By planting trees, when it does rain the trees can absorb the water and stop the run off.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  I don't know how well it scales, but trees perspire and also provide shade and root systems that keep groundwater from leeching out of the soil. They may not survive, but the ones that do I imagine will help as long as they're of the right varieties. An example would be olive trees, but hey there's a whole wikipedia article about it that definitely knows more than me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening "Trees store water, raise water from underlying aquifers, reduce evaporation after a rain, attract animals (and thereby fertility through feces), and they can cause more rain to fall (by temperature reduction and other effects), if the planted area is large enough."
- jefflombardjr 7y ago
  It is quite possible to change microclimates[0], even in a small area, and guess what, you change enough microclimates you change the climate in the whole area. A great example of transforming large tracts of land is the UVM Jericho research forest in Vermont. It was farmed for nearly 150 years, its soil degraded to the point where it was sandy and barren. I've heard it described as a moonscape. After planting 70,000 trees [1] and letting nature do its thing, it now resembles an old growth forest. It's a prime example of nature's capacity to heal itself and is a source of hope for me in the context of climate change. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate 1: https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/jericho_research_forest_and_conservation_center https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/jericho_research_forest_and_conser...
Hitton 7y ago
Seems a bit suspicious to me. You can't plant a tree in 5 minutes while making sure that it will actually keep growing.
- peteradio 7y ago
  These are likely bareroot "whips" which makes planting a lot more automatable and successful, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfI_T7qG_Ok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfI_T7qG_Ok
  - patpending 7y ago
    It's pretty quick to plant bare-root seedlings using a spade or "dibble". About 45 years ago another Boy Scout and I planted approximately 1,000 pine seedlings on a tree farm in a single day using a variant of the method shown in [1]. Once we got a rhythm going we planted around 3 trees per minute. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhqa3yeLxhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhqa3yeLxhk
- rullgrus 7y ago
  How so? When replanting clear cuts here in Sweden with pine or fir each tree takes a few seconds to plant - you stamp your tool in to the ground which makes a hole, drop the plant down, stomp the ground and then your off to the next. There is also no need to tend to them afterwards (except treatment to deter deer/elks).
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Which is a scattergun approach, no? What's the survival rate? I'd guess 1:100 if you're not tending them. But, in Ethiopia many of those trees are going to need watering, surely? Protecting from people gathering firewood? Sweden and Ethiopia seem pretty different wrt tree planting?
    - mikeg8 7y ago
      Definitely a scattergun approach but that’s similar to how nature does it, I’ve heard the survival rate for seedlings in north American confirer forests to be about 1:1,000,000.
a2tech 7y ago
And how many of them will immediately die? Big gestures like this are worthless without continuous maintenance and care on the trees.
ryanmercer 7y ago
And maybe a few tens of thousands will survive.
Tepix 7y ago
Numbers about Ethiopia's forest cover vary greatly, I see 4% in the year 2000 mentioned on Wikipedia, I see 14% in 2018 mentioned in this Bloomberg article and I see some numbers in between in a 2015 paper by Abraha Hatsey http://wiki.awf.forst.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/images/e/e9/6_3_hatsey.pdf http://wiki.awf.forst.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/images/e/e9/6_3... I wonder why the numbers are varying so wildly.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  If it was 4% I'm 2000, 14% in 2018, and in between in between, that doesn't suggest anything?
- netllama 7y ago
  The numbers vary so much because they're (nearly) all fabricated by whomever was interviewed. The Ethiopian government is notoriously corrupt. Lots of talking heads who contribute little. They're just trying to one up each other with fabricated statistics.
fortran77 7y ago
There's a movie based in Ethiopia coming out at the end of the month: The Red Sea Diving Resort (Netflix). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Sea_Diving_Resort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Sea_Diving_Resort
_bxg1 7y ago
But tell me again how the world's largest economy can't be bothered to do anything about climate change.
- Smrchy 7y ago
  The US already has the cleanest of water and air. No need to do anything when you are leading the others bigly.
  - kevin_b_er 7y ago
    Right now it does. Major financial/political interests are seeking to gut the laws that got us the cleanest water and air in order to make more money for themselves.
    - distances 7y ago
      Just in case you weren't sarcastic: the parent was, and US is obviously nowhere near the top of the list in regards of clean air and water.
      - adventured 7y ago
        The air in the US is in fact as clean as Western Europe. Comparing it to individual smaller nations, then I'm sure there are many examples that are cleaner. Comparing the US to larger population regions however it does compare very well to the best.
  - zrth 7y ago
    Why is there no need to act just because others are doing worse?
    - ganzuul 7y ago
      Should get international politicans to use their nation's climate virtue as a beating stick. No need to manufacture other kinds of outrage since climate atrocity is in plentiful supply.
jplayer01 7y ago
350m down (before considering how many actually turn into trees and survive), another 999.65 billion to go ... so what's everybody else doing?
- wang_li 7y ago
  > so what's everybody else doing? Based on the thread from yesterday, they're pushing for carbon taxes because that will solve everything. /s It always astonishes me how central government control is the only possible solution. Even if planting tree isn't going to solve climate change tomorrow, it does increase the amount of CO2 that is subtracted from the atmosphere, trees provide living spaces for numerous types of wildlife, they help prevent erosion. Given how many benefits there are to trees, people should be planting them even if they did nothing for moderating green house gases. The only thing they don't do is provide control and opportunities for graft. So I guess it makes sense that some people will poo-poo tree planting in favor of enriching their team.
crististm 7y ago
350M are a lot of trees to be planted in a day. I've done tree planting and the estimated time/effort don't add up. I'm skeptical about the numbers. Seed planting is a different story
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  What are you estimating as the effort?
  - crististm 7y ago
    20-40 trees per person per day
    - aldanor 7y ago
      Times 10% population = 350M
      - crististm 7y ago
        Because 10% of the population have nothing to do in a day and voluntarily plant trees? Hmmm... I might be underestimating Ethiopians though...
        lazyasciiart 7y ago
        Did you try reading any of the links people have added in this thread? Schools and government offices were closed. This was a big event that was planned for months. 10% participation sounds absolutely plausible if not lower than I'd expect.
        crististm 7y ago
        No. I would assume if this was such a big event that the original article would cover it. I guess it was that big that they did not need to add any details.
supernova87a 7y ago
Did anyone else find the 350M number implausible? They claim it happened in 12 hours. Unless they're talking about planting seeds, I find it hard to believe and take this story just as a political stunt. Ethiopia's population is 100M. Did 10% participate in this somehow, and each person plant 35 trees across the country? How would you even get that many trees to plant?
- icebraining 7y ago
  Apparently they're seedlings, not just seeds. Seems to be a large campaign; one company alone was boasting about having planted 1M. But I have no idea if it's verified in any way.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  They've been planning this for a while. Lots of schools and government offices were closed so people could do this - I wouldn't be surprised if more than 10% of people were involved.
  - netllama 7y ago
    They didn't mention that most schools in Ethiopia are half day by default (because they lack sufficient teachers & school rooms to educate all the children for a full day). So in reality, most children wouldn't have been in school for half the day regardless.
- simplicio 7y ago
  Yea, it does feel like there must be some fine print behind that number. FWIW, the Minister's twitter account does specify tree seedlings, so it doesn't sound like they just airdropped 350 million seeds or anything like that. Though the limiting factor on how fast you can plant trees is more the production of seedlings than the physical labor of planting. So I guess if they've spend the last several months growing and distributing seedlings in preparation for this campaign, actually plainting them all in one day isn't so crazy
- moksly 7y ago
  I have a friend who has a small business doing, well I actually have no clue what the English word for it is, but its direct translation would be “Nature Nursing/Care taking”. A descriptive translation would be something like a wild nature gartner. I asked him and he said it would be little trouble to plant that many seedlings if you coordinates the efforts and planned for it. He also told me that these stunts, like airlines planting a lot of trees to go carbon neutral, often ends up with a lot of dead trees. Because the hard part isn’t planting trees it’s making sure they survive the first five years.
wiremine 7y ago
This is really cool. I'm the adoptive father of an Ethiopian daughter, and we've come to love the country. It's a physically beautiful place, really excited to see them continue to move forward in the climate change front.
MiguelVieira 7y ago
Did they plant native tree species? Did they plant them in places that should naturally be forested? Most of Ethiopia's naturally occurring landscapes are deserts, savannas, and shrublands. I worry they're destroying native landscapes by replacing them with non-native tree plantations.
jbattle 7y ago
Ethiopia is a gorgeous country. I highly recommend it as a place to visit. I've been a handful of times and there's so much to see. The people are awesome, the food can't be beat, and coffee is everywhere. Its a multi-cultural country so as you travel around the diversity in how people live and dress is striking. Regarding the trees - it is the rainy season in Ethiopia, should last another few months. The country is huge and while parts of it are very very dry, other parts are borderline jungle. There are some cloud rain forests, not sure if they have "proper" rain forests. Ethiopia actually as a country has a lot of water (though it does need to be carefully managed) The government invests heavily in the country (as does China). In the span of a few years I saw huge changes in the infrastructure.
flareback 7y ago
Is this supposed to be a part of the Great Green Wall?
gniv 7y ago
This seems similar to (and maybe inspired by) efforts in Pakistan [1] and India [2] from the last few years. It would be interesting to read follow-ups to those efforts. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/pakistan-s-billion-tree-tsunami-is-astonishing/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/pakistan-s-billion-tr... [2] https://www.upworthy.com/how-india-managed-to-plant-66-million-trees-in-a-single-day-and-why-we-should-copy-them https://www.upworthy.com/how-india-managed-to-plant-66-milli...
charlescearl 7y ago
I am surprised that no one mentioned the Greenbelt Movement, a grass roots effort started in neighboring Kenya by Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai [0]. They have successfully planted millions of trees over the years to combat deforestation. The strides that the current Ethiopian government has taken in terms of human rights and commitment to resolving ethnic disparities are tremendous [1]. Since most humans have an Ethiopian grandma in the family tree, these are accomplishments that we can all take pride in. [0] http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/ http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/ [1] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/ethiopia https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/ethio...

389 points by auntienomen 7y ago

math is hard..... ok, I've been over this on another thread. The average forest density in the United States is 5500 trees per acre. So 353 million trees equals about 64182 acres of equivalent US forest. This sounds impressive, but that equals 100 square miles. A square 10 miles by 10 miles in size. For a little more perspective, Ethiopia is 426,400 square miles in land mass. This means they planted the equivalent of 0.02% of their land mass with trees vs the forest density of the typical US forest. (for the record, those evil guys that cut down trees for profit, plant 52 million trees per year every year in the US) Meanwhile, as per the 353 million-in-a-day estimate: let's say for sake of argument that the average person can manage to plant one tree per minute and they are working an 8 hour shift with no breaks, pauses, distractions or complications. That's close to half-a-million people to cover all three shifts in a single day. And that's with generous assumptions. The Ethiopian government says that they expect a single volunteer to be able to plant 100 trees in a day. Which means if the 350 million in a day is accurate, they had 3.5 million volunteers. Call me suspicious of such an ambitious estimate. with a little more digging, to their credit, these 350 million trees are just the latest on a re-forestation project that now boasts 2.6 billion trees planted since it began. But math again, that equates to 739 square miles of equivalent US forest (less than 0.2% of the total land mass of Ethiopia or an equivalent square of 27 miles on a side of typical US forest. That's just over half the size of the state of Rhode Island or about the size of Washtenaw county, MI where I live. Tt their ultimate goal is to plant 4 billion trees total before the project is finished. Admirable indeed. But, I did find figures on my home state of Michigan for comparison. While I have yet to find a number on the total number of trees before the reforestation in Ethiopia, I can guess based on the decline of 25% cited and the goal of 4 billion trees total. ((4/25) * 15) = 2.4 (billion) for a total of 6.4 billion trees assuming their desire is to re-achieve the 40% number from a century ago. Estimates for the state of Michigan are a total of 13.5 billion trees across the entire state. That's more than twice the assumed 'final goal' for the entire country of Ethiopia. Oh, should I mention the land area of Ethiopia is 4 1/2 times more than that of the state of Michigan? Other things worthy of consideration which I noticed while digging. Many areas of Michigan were clear cut in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (i.e. about the same timeline as the de-forestation in Ethiopia) To be fair, some of the areas cut were re-forested by WPA government work programs in the 1930s. But not all. The reports I was pulling my figures from were actually surveys done by the state government for the purpose of evaluating potential future timber cutting, and they noted a large number of hardwoods (oaks, maples, elm, etc) in those numbers (most of the wpa planted trees were pine trees) and a growing quantity of older trees as a percentage of the total. aka "old growth" or mature forests.

keeganjw 7y ago

What an incredible feat! A heroic effort for reforestation.

auntienomen 7y ago
It makes it seem like planting the trillion trees we'd need to arrest climate change might not be out of reach.

sriram_malhar 7y ago

How were they watered the next week?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
scotty79 7y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=weather+in+ethiopia https://www.google.com/search?q=weather+in+ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ethiopia#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ethiopia#Climate
isostatic 7y ago
Ethipoia, and Africa as a whole, is not Band Aid. Addis Ababa gets more rainfall each year than Washington state.
- sriram_malhar 7y ago
  What Band Aid? I'm talking of the mechanics of keeping 350 million trees alive. That takes effort, and a lot more area besides Addis Ababa. I'm inclined to disbelieve these numbers unless I see some trustworthy non-govt source. Everyone's quoting the minister.
  - dgacmu 7y ago
    Band Aid in this case refers to a charity fundraising effort started in the 1980s to combat famine in Ethiopia. It included some misleading lyrics in its headliner song: > Lyrics of the song included description of the country saying, "where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow..." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_Aid_(band) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_Aid_(band)
    - swish_bob 7y ago
      It was a response to an immense drought in Ethiopia (largely the result of deforestation). They had years with almost no rain. It really wasn't misleading with respect to the situation at the time.

aaron695 7y ago

So, this is junk obviously. But the question is.... Were any tree's planted at all? Is it 100% propaganda? If they said 300 million but if it was 50 million, fair enough. Close enough. Equalling India a more developed, stable country 13 times the size would be amazing, unbelievable even, a point of change for Ethiopia, they should get the record. But I think it'll be zero. Not 10 million, not 1 million, zero (~Less than 100,000). [edit] I'll raise my estimate to 1 million, I was wrong on zero, there are some first hand reports of some structure and some people did actually planted some trees https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/cjfqu5/about_350m_trees_have_been_planted_in_a_single/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/cjfqu5/about_35... [edit] hashtags of a few very chaotic scenes, at 10 million trees planted I'd expect one aerial view of around 10,000 trees planted somewhere - https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=PlantOurPrint https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=PlantOurPrint https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E1%8A%A0%E1%88%A8%E1%8A%95%E1%8C%8F%E1%8B%B4%E1%8A%A0%E1%88%BB%E1%88%AB?src=hash https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E1%8A%A0%E1%88%A8%E1%8A%95%E1%8... This is a know propaganda move from the government, what's in question is if they did it (They didn't) to divert the mood of the people, or mostly made it up.

oblio 7y ago

I wish them luck. I'm a sort of history buff and Ethiopia has an amazing history. It's been a state (in various forms and with different names) for more than 2000 years, in a part of the world where such stability has been scarce. It has its own ancient alphabet. It was the only country in Africa to resist the Scramble for Africa and was only occupied by Italy for less than 10 years (after putting the Italian Army to shame initially... and it was only occupied because it got almost 0 outside help). This seems like an awesome initiative, but they will need a lot of help. Their population went from 70 million in 2007 to 100 million in 2017. The current forecast is for about 200 million by 2050. I hope they grow peacefully and without internal conflicts, Africa desperately needs a pole of stability and prosperity in the region. It's going to be a tough struggle for them!

bloemy 7y ago
Have you by any chance read the book "Dictatorland" by Paul Kenyon? If you haven't, you'll love it. Anyways, another incredible history if Eritrea, and their common history with Ethiopia is pretty crazy too. One of those countries the world really knows nothing about...
bayesian_horse 7y ago
I wouldn't say it's that stable or that the rest of Africa is instable, especially compared to Europe. It's just that Europe industrialized earlier and got to reap rewards that can only come from most simple needs being met easily. In general, the developing countries are mostly "behind the curve", meaning their economic growth mostly wasn't that much lower for most of history, but rather they started somewhat later, often because they needed the technology developed in the west (modern agriculture mostly) to start increasing their population density. As far as I understand it, Africa is suitable for both very primitive and very advanced agriculture, but not much "in between" and so they got stuck with hunting/gathering and subsistence farming. They also didn't have access to proper domestic animals before Europe industrialized, though they had better animals than the South Americans, apparently. Neither a LLama nor a zebra can pull a plow. Many countries in Africa were jumpstarted by colonization, and the colonists didn't have any interest in making that growth sustainable or giving the natives the tools to sustain that growth on their own. That's why white African farmers can say the black Africans can't manage huge farms for sh. Well, the white farmers didn't teach it to them and prevented them from learning it on their own... Ethiopia is probably slightly different.

lmilcin 7y ago

Not to discourage, but even reforesting entire land that could possibly be covered in forest will not arrest climate change noticeably. The reason is because forest do not change CO2 levels noticeably, in the long run. The reason is because there is roughly constant amount of carbon in Earths biomass. Planting treas only increases the amonut of biomass by a little bit but has no lasting effect of scrubbing CO2 from atmosphere. The real solution to climate change is undoing decades of constant addition of CO2 to atmosphere. This requires not only scrubbing CO2 from atmosphere but also sequestering the carbon somehow which means preventing it getting back to carbon cycle. If you really wanted to make planting trees have an effect you would not only need to plant trees, you would need to regularly cut them (before they burn) and store them somewhere, maybe at the bottom of ocean, from where it will not be released (decomposed, burned, etc.) Of course, planting trees have other beneficial effects like helping to keep rainwater. It is just important to make sure right kinds of trees (and large variety of them!) are planted to not repeat mistakes that were made in other places.

luesterklemme 7y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting... ETH Zürich seems to disagree with that statement.
- lmilcin 7y ago
  The Guardian seems to disagree with you. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/01/negative-emissions-tech-climate-emergency-carbon-dioxide-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/01/negati...
- lmilcin 7y ago
  Well, humanity uses around 15 billion tonnes of coal and oil and gas every year. At that speed, in just 30 years, we add as much carbon to the atmosphere as entire biomass of Earth.
abraae 7y ago

jordn 7y ago

Is there any proof or details of how they did this? 350,000,000 is a lot of trees to source, distribute and plant in one day.

nottorp 7y ago
They only planted them in one day. I bet the distribution took a while...
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  The article gives no details but I'd look to see how many things are planted from seed in a nursery each day to at least get an indication of the number of things which can be "planted" in a given day. Many trees could be said to have been planted by someone scattering apple seeds out of their pockets.
  - nottorp 7y ago
    The article says something about 40 trees planted by each citizen... so I'm guessing this 350 M batch was distributed equally to everyone they could reach.
thinkingemote 7y ago
Planting a tree is as easy as planting a tiny seed in the ground. What all these headlines omit is that the majority of things planted won't survive. My back yard has a few thousand tree seedlings growing in it naturally. When we hear of tree planting we picture a mayor or rich person planting a four year old tree in a park. The reality is that trees grow from seed. In the case of commercial forestry all the trees planted won't make it. A better vision of tree planting is Johnny Appleseed. Edits. The Twitter from the Ethiopian minister says tree seedlings.
- taneq 7y ago
  > When we hear of tree planting we picture a mayor or rich person planting a four year old tree in a park. The reality is that trees grow from seed. Yeah but trees are hardline r-strategists and produce millions of disposable seeds with a very low survival rate. Planting a seed is in no way equivalent to planting a germinated, sprouted, and developed seedling.

iam_varunnair 7y ago

This is inspiring!

chewz 7y ago

Tommorrow's headlines - Goats in Ethiopia have eaten 350 million trees. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zctymnb/revision/4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zctymnb/revision/4 http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/importance-goats-east-africas-recovery-drought/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/importance-goats-east-africas...

mikece 7y ago

I'm not a botanist, but if they are experiencing drought then how will these newly planted trees survive? According to the article they are so low on water they are slashing output on their hydro-power system and ceasing electricity exports.

giarc 7y ago
Also not a botanist but often places could experience drought because they have cleared the land and the water runs off to river/ocean. By planting trees, when it does rain the trees can absorb the water and stop the run off.
neltnerb 7y ago
I don't know how well it scales, but trees perspire and also provide shade and root systems that keep groundwater from leeching out of the soil. They may not survive, but the ones that do I imagine will help as long as they're of the right varieties. An example would be olive trees, but hey there's a whole wikipedia article about it that definitely knows more than me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening "Trees store water, raise water from underlying aquifers, reduce evaporation after a rain, attract animals (and thereby fertility through feces), and they can cause more rain to fall (by temperature reduction and other effects), if the planted area is large enough."
jefflombardjr 7y ago
It is quite possible to change microclimates[0], even in a small area, and guess what, you change enough microclimates you change the climate in the whole area. A great example of transforming large tracts of land is the UVM Jericho research forest in Vermont. It was farmed for nearly 150 years, its soil degraded to the point where it was sandy and barren. I've heard it described as a moonscape. After planting 70,000 trees [1] and letting nature do its thing, it now resembles an old growth forest. It's a prime example of nature's capacity to heal itself and is a source of hope for me in the context of climate change. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate 1: https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/jericho_research_forest_and_conservation_center https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/jericho_research_forest_and_conser...

Hitton 7y ago

Seems a bit suspicious to me. You can't plant a tree in 5 minutes while making sure that it will actually keep growing.

peteradio 7y ago
These are likely bareroot "whips" which makes planting a lot more automatable and successful, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfI_T7qG_Ok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfI_T7qG_Ok
- patpending 7y ago
  It's pretty quick to plant bare-root seedlings using a spade or "dibble". About 45 years ago another Boy Scout and I planted approximately 1,000 pine seedlings on a tree farm in a single day using a variant of the method shown in [1]. Once we got a rhythm going we planted around 3 trees per minute. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhqa3yeLxhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhqa3yeLxhk
rullgrus 7y ago
How so? When replanting clear cuts here in Sweden with pine or fir each tree takes a few seconds to plant - you stamp your tool in to the ground which makes a hole, drop the plant down, stomp the ground and then your off to the next. There is also no need to tend to them afterwards (except treatment to deter deer/elks).
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Which is a scattergun approach, no? What's the survival rate? I'd guess 1:100 if you're not tending them. But, in Ethiopia many of those trees are going to need watering, surely? Protecting from people gathering firewood? Sweden and Ethiopia seem pretty different wrt tree planting?
  - mikeg8 7y ago
    Definitely a scattergun approach but that’s similar to how nature does it, I’ve heard the survival rate for seedlings in north American confirer forests to be about 1:1,000,000.

a2tech 7y ago

And how many of them will immediately die? Big gestures like this are worthless without continuous maintenance and care on the trees.

ryanmercer 7y ago

And maybe a few tens of thousands will survive.

Tepix 7y ago

Numbers about Ethiopia's forest cover vary greatly, I see 4% in the year 2000 mentioned on Wikipedia, I see 14% in 2018 mentioned in this Bloomberg article and I see some numbers in between in a 2015 paper by Abraha Hatsey http://wiki.awf.forst.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/images/e/e9/6_3_hatsey.pdf http://wiki.awf.forst.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/images/e/e9/6_3... I wonder why the numbers are varying so wildly.

saalweachter 7y ago
If it was 4% I'm 2000, 14% in 2018, and in between in between, that doesn't suggest anything?
netllama 7y ago
The numbers vary so much because they're (nearly) all fabricated by whomever was interviewed. The Ethiopian government is notoriously corrupt. Lots of talking heads who contribute little. They're just trying to one up each other with fabricated statistics.

fortran77 7y ago

There's a movie based in Ethiopia coming out at the end of the month: The Red Sea Diving Resort (Netflix). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Sea_Diving_Resort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Sea_Diving_Resort

_bxg1 7y ago

But tell me again how the world's largest economy can't be bothered to do anything about climate change.

Smrchy 7y ago
The US already has the cleanest of water and air. No need to do anything when you are leading the others bigly.
- kevin_b_er 7y ago
  Right now it does. Major financial/political interests are seeking to gut the laws that got us the cleanest water and air in order to make more money for themselves.
  - distances 7y ago
    Just in case you weren't sarcastic: the parent was, and US is obviously nowhere near the top of the list in regards of clean air and water.
    - adventured 7y ago
      The air in the US is in fact as clean as Western Europe. Comparing it to individual smaller nations, then I'm sure there are many examples that are cleaner. Comparing the US to larger population regions however it does compare very well to the best.
- zrth 7y ago
  Why is there no need to act just because others are doing worse?
  - ganzuul 7y ago
    Should get international politicans to use their nation's climate virtue as a beating stick. No need to manufacture other kinds of outrage since climate atrocity is in plentiful supply.

jplayer01 7y ago

350m down (before considering how many actually turn into trees and survive), another 999.65 billion to go ... so what's everybody else doing?

wang_li 7y ago
> so what's everybody else doing? Based on the thread from yesterday, they're pushing for carbon taxes because that will solve everything. /s It always astonishes me how central government control is the only possible solution. Even if planting tree isn't going to solve climate change tomorrow, it does increase the amount of CO2 that is subtracted from the atmosphere, trees provide living spaces for numerous types of wildlife, they help prevent erosion. Given how many benefits there are to trees, people should be planting them even if they did nothing for moderating green house gases. The only thing they don't do is provide control and opportunities for graft. So I guess it makes sense that some people will poo-poo tree planting in favor of enriching their team.

crististm 7y ago

350M are a lot of trees to be planted in a day. I've done tree planting and the estimated time/effort don't add up. I'm skeptical about the numbers. Seed planting is a different story

lazyasciiart 7y ago
What are you estimating as the effort?
- crististm 7y ago
  20-40 trees per person per day
  - aldanor 7y ago
    Times 10% population = 350M
    - crististm 7y ago
      Because 10% of the population have nothing to do in a day and voluntarily plant trees? Hmmm... I might be underestimating Ethiopians though...
      - lazyasciiart 7y ago
        Did you try reading any of the links people have added in this thread? Schools and government offices were closed. This was a big event that was planned for months. 10% participation sounds absolutely plausible if not lower than I'd expect.
        crististm 7y ago
        No. I would assume if this was such a big event that the original article would cover it. I guess it was that big that they did not need to add any details.

supernova87a 7y ago

Did anyone else find the 350M number implausible? They claim it happened in 12 hours. Unless they're talking about planting seeds, I find it hard to believe and take this story just as a political stunt. Ethiopia's population is 100M. Did 10% participate in this somehow, and each person plant 35 trees across the country? How would you even get that many trees to plant?

icebraining 7y ago
Apparently they're seedlings, not just seeds. Seems to be a large campaign; one company alone was boasting about having planted 1M. But I have no idea if it's verified in any way.
lazyasciiart 7y ago
They've been planning this for a while. Lots of schools and government offices were closed so people could do this - I wouldn't be surprised if more than 10% of people were involved.
- netllama 7y ago
  They didn't mention that most schools in Ethiopia are half day by default (because they lack sufficient teachers & school rooms to educate all the children for a full day). So in reality, most children wouldn't have been in school for half the day regardless.
simplicio 7y ago
Yea, it does feel like there must be some fine print behind that number. FWIW, the Minister's twitter account does specify tree seedlings, so it doesn't sound like they just airdropped 350 million seeds or anything like that. Though the limiting factor on how fast you can plant trees is more the production of seedlings than the physical labor of planting. So I guess if they've spend the last several months growing and distributing seedlings in preparation for this campaign, actually plainting them all in one day isn't so crazy
moksly 7y ago
I have a friend who has a small business doing, well I actually have no clue what the English word for it is, but its direct translation would be “Nature Nursing/Care taking”. A descriptive translation would be something like a wild nature gartner. I asked him and he said it would be little trouble to plant that many seedlings if you coordinates the efforts and planned for it. He also told me that these stunts, like airlines planting a lot of trees to go carbon neutral, often ends up with a lot of dead trees. Because the hard part isn’t planting trees it’s making sure they survive the first five years.

wiremine 7y ago

This is really cool. I'm the adoptive father of an Ethiopian daughter, and we've come to love the country. It's a physically beautiful place, really excited to see them continue to move forward in the climate change front.

MiguelVieira 7y ago

Did they plant native tree species? Did they plant them in places that should naturally be forested? Most of Ethiopia's naturally occurring landscapes are deserts, savannas, and shrublands. I worry they're destroying native landscapes by replacing them with non-native tree plantations.

jbattle 7y ago

Ethiopia is a gorgeous country. I highly recommend it as a place to visit. I've been a handful of times and there's so much to see. The people are awesome, the food can't be beat, and coffee is everywhere. Its a multi-cultural country so as you travel around the diversity in how people live and dress is striking. Regarding the trees - it is the rainy season in Ethiopia, should last another few months. The country is huge and while parts of it are very very dry, other parts are borderline jungle. There are some cloud rain forests, not sure if they have "proper" rain forests. Ethiopia actually as a country has a lot of water (though it does need to be carefully managed) The government invests heavily in the country (as does China). In the span of a few years I saw huge changes in the infrastructure.

flareback 7y ago

Is this supposed to be a part of the Great Green Wall?

gniv 7y ago

This seems similar to (and maybe inspired by) efforts in Pakistan [1] and India [2] from the last few years. It would be interesting to read follow-ups to those efforts. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/pakistan-s-billion-tree-tsunami-is-astonishing/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/pakistan-s-billion-tr... [2] https://www.upworthy.com/how-india-managed-to-plant-66-million-trees-in-a-single-day-and-why-we-should-copy-them https://www.upworthy.com/how-india-managed-to-plant-66-milli...

charlescearl 7y ago

I am surprised that no one mentioned the Greenbelt Movement, a grass roots effort started in neighboring Kenya by Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai [0]. They have successfully planted millions of trees over the years to combat deforestation. The strides that the current Ethiopian government has taken in terms of human rights and commitment to resolving ethnic disparities are tremendous [1]. Since most humans have an Ethiopian grandma in the family tree, these are accomplishments that we can all take pride in. [0] http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/ http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/ [1] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/ethiopia https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/ethio...