The Optimist Daily · 3 hours ago

Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative Is Turning Citizens Into Foresters | the Optimist Daily

Ethiopia's Green Legacy Initiative set out to reverse a century of forest loss, and while the official count of 48 billion planted trees invites scrutiny, something undeniable is already taking root. Halima Kedir, a 35-year-old woman in the Berbere district, planted thousands of trees despite her neighbors' doubts, walking an hour each way to carry water to her seedlings - caring for them, as she puts it, through the Oromo tradition of guddifachaa: "Just like we adopt a child in our tradition, I see them like my own children." The skeptics who once thought she was "striving for nothing" now call her a role model. As one researcher notes, "Even if half of the trees that have been planted survive, we are already gaining moisture, keeping soil and sequestering carbon" - and perhaps more consequentially, a nation's story about itself has changed. Most of it started the same way: someone deciding to plant something and not stopping.