John Mulimba, Uganda’s State Minister of Foreign Affairs in charge of regional Affairs, has heaped praise on government and the people of Ethiopia for the Green Legacy Initiative, a flagship program aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Launched in June 2019, the initiative involves mass planting of trees by the people of Ethiopia across the country.
According to Mulimba, the campaign is pivotal in addressing the underlying challenges of climate change caused by the cutting of trees for charcoal.
“Part of the problem we have in the region is the destruction of wetlands and forest cover which have an impact on the water levels in the Nile basin. We therefore welcome the Green Legacy Project of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia,” Mulimba said on Thursday while speaking at the second Africa-Run Forum on equitable and reasonable utilization of trans-boundary water resources in Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“Planting trees will return stability and nutrients to the soil, improve yields for local farmers and protect the community’s water supply. In Uganda we are moving in the same direction but perhaps not at the scale of Ethiopia. This is a best practice that we should all emulate,” he added.
The project was launched with around 40,000 nurseries supplying the seedlings. Their number rose last year to 121,000, with a cumulative capacity of producing 7.6 billion seedlings of various species.
The Initiative also mobilized 25 million Ethiopians to plant 25 billion seedlings within the four years, creating more than 750,000 jobs mostly for women and youth.
At the start of this month, the country’s Prime Minister, Dr Abiy Ahmed, launched the second phase of the Green Legacy Initiative in the the Eastern region of Afar, and the nation is set to plant 6.5 billion seedlings during this rainy season.
Ethiopia plans to restore at least 22 million hectares of its degraded land by 2030.