Building green economy through afforestation

Fekadu Wubete

Atomsa Hailu is a coffee farmer in Oromiya State of Illu Ababora zone. He said these days he is planting coffee shrubs interspersed with other indigenous species of trees. According to him, all villagers were used to planting eucalyptus trees. However, he said, now villagers have understood the fact that eucalyptus trees are not suitable to the environment for they have big roots that penetrate deeper and suck ground water to the level of depletion.

He knows coffee trees love the shade of trees and wet areas. However, eucalyptus trees are not suitable to them.  He explained that anyone can compare the productivity of coffee trees growing among indigenous trees like mahogany and podocarpus and ones among eucalyptus trees.

Indubitably, coffee trees planted under the shade of indigenous trees become more productive and enable farmers to perennially harvest bumpy produce. The plot of land covered with them is cultivable and wet while same piece of land covered with eucalyptus trees is terribly dry and unsightly.

According to Atomsa, earlier villagers were unaware of the benefits of forestation and planting domestic seeds of trees. Moreover, they used to cut down trees mercilessly. And trees were exposed to unceasing exploitation of illegal loggers. However, currently, every villager has very well understood the benefit of conserving trees and nurturing indigenous trees to protect the environment from desertification.

Sileshi Aynekulu, a forestry expert working in local NGO, shares the ideas of Atomsa. According to him, days of inexperience and ignorance are long gone. Now, awareness about the importance of environmental conservation is taking root with time.

He said, evidentially, let alone axing and sawing down trees, every farmer has understood the significance of planting indigenous seedlings and striving for the good of mankind, protecting the environment from a hell of scorching heat and undertaking massive forestation activities.

Sileshi reckons that forefathers and mothers have bequeathed green environment accompanied with canopy of big trees. However, the current century has seen savage destruction of forests in unprecedented scale. But, lately, the mindset of individuals regarding the significance of forests has been changing; individuals that used to cut down trees have now refrained from their destructive act.

Currently, there is no large scale clearing of forests for cultivation purpose. Even, sporadic cutting down of trees has been dwindling due to remarkable awareness about the benefit of trees for curbing the ill-impacts of climate change.  Villagers are dutifully watching out forests in their locality and patrol forests in groups. They even know aged big trees in every farm yard and exchange information about who does what.

Gone are days of careless devastation. Now time has come for farmers in every village to conserve trees. Even, they have set up ground rules to punish wrong doers and rectify them as far as planting trees, restoring the environment and redressing the community.

Sileshi is of the opinion that astonishing change is being observed regarding conservation of the environment and curtailing the evil impacts of climate change. Now, the community is campaigning to plant millions of seedlings every year and the environment is reviving better year after year.

Documents had it that about 35 – 40 per cent of the area of Ethiopia was covered with dense forests at the dawn of the 19 century. However, rapid population growth , extensive forest clearing for cultivation and over-grazing and exploitation of forests for fire wood and construction materials without replanting has diminished the forest area of the country to 16 per cent in the 1950’s and 3.1 per cent in 1980s.

Seeing the deterioration of environmental condition, Ethiopia has been committed to rehabilitate its environment, prevent the undesirable consequences of desertification and reduce its expansion through afforestation. Accordingly, the amount of forest cover in the country has shown sizable increment (as a result of tireless reforestation endeavor exerted by the coordinated effort of the government and the greater public in the last decade).

Since then, nation has been fighting teeth and nail to enhance its total forest cover and forest coverage has tripled in size since 2000. Observably, Ethiopia had planted more than 700 million trees in 2007 alone, according to the UN, surpassing Mexico that planted 217 million and the rest of the world in a drive to combat climate change through forestation projects.

Untiring reforestation campaigns have enabled to restore forest lands of the country more than ever. Hence, Ethiopia has been so many times commended for undertaking reforestation and afforestation to restore 15 million hectares of land and prevent unpleasant consequences of climate change. Practically, Ethiopia has managed to restore lots of barren lands and turn them in to lush green. Accordingly, some say, other countries have to mimic best experiences of afforestation from Ethiopia.

Reports indicate that Ethiopia has a potential of 18 million hectares open land to be covered with forests. And the government has planned to plant 4.3 billion seedlings on a million hectares of land last rainy season. The program is anticipated to contribute its own for the success of Ethiopia’s ongoing green growth strategy. The afforestation program will be invigorated with various incentives and leverages as Ethiopia has envisaged boosting national forest coverage to 30 percent by 2025 from 15.5 percent   at present.

Nation is and has been undertaking tremendous afforestation activities targeted to cope up with the ever exacerbating problem of climate change. The campaign has been gaining momentum and everyone is participating in the afforestation and reforestation programs being implemented across the country (politicians, priests, students and private and public employees are all participating in the campaign).

However, some are criticizing the activity as political mumbo-jumbo. They are forwarding the allegation that the country has not prepared accurate map of barren and degraded lands to be covered by forests. They said politicians are undertaking dog’s breakfast campaigns only for the sake of consumption of statistics. Let alone compiling huge compendium of maps, there is no accurate statistics about the number of seedlings planted, the amount that has survived and been taken care of very well.

Even, the writer was a participant in a forestation campaign around Sululta and Kotebe Gabriel localities (both in the northern and south eastern outskirts of Addis Ababa, respectively). And I could witness that the campaign I joined was not very well organized. And the campaigners were planting seedlings among a patch of dense forest covered with eucalyptus trees, where there is high possibility that the new seedlings may be throttled by eucalyptus trees that are known to be aversive to new species.

Despite these challenges, nation has formulated feasible policy to ensure that forestry development strategies are integrated with the endeavor of development and management of land, water and energy resources as well as with crop and livestock production.

In addition, the policy has eyed to find substitutes for construction and fuel wood demand of the country, in order to reduce pressure on forests (conservation strategy of Ethiopia has targeted to boost technical capacity on the designing improved cooking stoves, promoting local manufacturers and enhancing distribution of improved charcoal and biomass stoves).

Now millions of farmers are well aware of the threat of desertification, the alarming escalation of environmental temperature and the reason why ground water, rivers and springs are desiccating. Presently, let alone cutting down big trees, everyone is busily working to protect the environment.

They believe it is high time to restore the damaged environment and nurture forests. No one goes to forests with axes and kindles fire to clear bushes. Particularly, individuals are guarding their locality to ensure its safety and watch out for possible loggers that may furtively cut down trees.

Ethiopia is visionary to achieve middle-income status by 2025 in a climate-resilient green economy. To this end, it will aggressively strive to build green economy through intensive forestation (based on improving crop and livestock production practices for higher food security and farmer income while reducing emissions; protecting and re-establishing forests for their economic and ecosystem services, among others).

Similarly, measures will be taken to conserve forest resources including creating awareness among the public and the government, building institutional capacity, implementing sustainable forest management and promoting reforestation and afforestation.

Currently, millions of farmers like Atomsa are striving with better awareness to protect the environment and plant millions of new plantlets. Rome was not built in a day. Hopes are great that Ethiopia could avert the evil impacts of climate change through the efforts of its citizens working hard to restore degraded lands and undertaking massive afforestation.