
Ethiopia Plants 350M Trees in One Day to Combat Drought and Climate Change - auntienomen
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/ethiopia-plants-350-million-trees-in-one-day-to-combat-drought
======
oblio
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!

~~~
bayesian_horse
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.

~~~
neuronic
> 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.

Europe's industrialization as well as other Western countries heavily depended
on the exploitation of third world countries in Asia and Africa, especially
after WW2.

Sweatshops and slavery and cheap mass transportation of goods make our
lifestyle possible. For a very recent example, smartphones produced in the
US/Europe would simply not be affordable for most users and the technology
would be nowhere near where it is nowadays since initial smartphones would
have never been popular. It took suicide-level conditions in places like
Foxconn to get us our gadget at <$1000.

So who are African nations going to exploit? Each other?

~~~
nottorp
<quote>It took suicide-level conditions in places like Foxconn to get us our
gadget at <$1000.</quote>

Not that I disagree with the rest of the post, but it's time the suicides at
Foxconn story dies a fiery death.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/07/10/apples-c...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/07/10/apples-
chinese-suicides-and-the-amazing-economics-of-ha-joon-chang/#327ffeca36a6)

The juicy quote:

At the time of that spate of suicides Foxconn had nearly 1 million workers in
its plants. There were up to 14 suicides (it depends whose count you want to
use) among that 1 million. The average rate of suicide in China is 22 per
100,000 people per year. That is, the suicide rate at Foxconn was under 5% of
the general suicide rate of the Chinese population.

~~~
newsgremlin
The difference is those suicides at Foxconn are for one reason only, working
conditions.

Meanwhile the general suicide rate in China is for any number of reasons.

Playing a pure numbers game with peoples lives is distasteful.

~~~
ceejayoz
> The difference is those suicides at Foxconn are for one reason only, working
> conditions.

That's a pretty wild assertion.

Is there a reason to believe that the folks working at Foxconn have otherwise
100% idyllic lives with no divorces, deaths of loved ones, clinical
depression, etc.?

~~~
orwin
Well, this happened in France circa 2008 in a state company becoming private.
The suicide rate was bit superior to the population average, but not that
much.

So the CEO argument during trial was to compare the suicide rate to cop's
suicide rate and say "that's not too bad". This is dumb. You should compare to
the suicide rate in similar company, or if you cna't find similar company in
your country, you take the suicide rate 5 years prior and adjust for
intangibles. Turns out the suicide rate in telco was way inferior to the
population average prior to the "new management" methods. The ex-CEO will
probably avoid prison still. But the trial isn't over yet, so anything can
happen.

------
supernova87a
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?

~~~
moksly
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.

~~~
PakG1
Now that is interesting. What are the challenges for making sure the trees
survive the first five years? Do you have any knowledge you can help to
elaborate?

~~~
samstave
My assumption is making sure they get enough water.

~~~
baud147258
Perhaps also not get eaten by herbivores, not damaged by bigger animals,
humans and vehicles and protected from insects.

~~~
blaser-waffle
All valid points, but Ethiopia is a dry mountainous country next to other dry
countries. It already has a track record for droughts and famines. Proper
irrigation probably the #1 problem.

------
jbattle
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.

------
mikece
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.

~~~
jefflombardjr
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_conser...](https://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/jericho_research_forest_and_conservation_center)

------
jordn
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.

~~~
thinkingemote
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
> 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.

------
gniv
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-
tr...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/pakistan-s-billion-tree-tsunami-
is-astonishing/)

[2] [https://www.upworthy.com/how-india-managed-to-
plant-66-milli...](https://www.upworthy.com/how-india-managed-to-
plant-66-million-trees-in-a-single-day-and-why-we-should-copy-them)

------
fortran77
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)

------
keeganjw
What an incredible feat! A heroic effort for reforestation.

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

------
wiremine
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.

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

~~~
rullgrus
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
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
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is that for natural or manual (eg from helicopter) scattering?

~~~
mikeg8
Natural. Each year a forest may produce hundreds of millions of seeds but only
a few thousand saplings survive.

------
charlescearl
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/ethio...](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-
chapters/ethiopia)

------
MiguelVieira
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.

------
Tepix
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...](http://wiki.awf.forst.uni-
goettingen.de/wiki/images/e/e9/6_3_hatsey.pdf)

I wonder why the numbers are varying so wildly.

~~~
saalweachter
If it was 4% I'm 2000, 14% in 2018, and in between in between, that doesn't
suggest anything?

------
jplayer01
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
> 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.

------
chewz
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...](http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/importance-goats-east-africas-
recovery-drought/)

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

------
crististm
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
What are you estimating as the effort?

~~~
crististm
20-40 trees per person per day

~~~
aldanor
Times 10% population = 350M

~~~
crististm
Because 10% of the population have nothing to do in a day and voluntarily
plant trees? Hmmm...

I might be underestimating Ethiopians though...

~~~
lazyasciiart
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
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.

~~~
swish_bob
They didn't bother with _any_ details ...

------
sriram_malhar
How were they watered the next week?

~~~
isostatic
Ethipoia, and Africa as a whole, is not Band Aid. Addis Ababa gets more
rainfall each year than Washington state.

~~~
sriram_malhar
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
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
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.

------
treii28
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.

------
_bxg1
But tell me again how the world's largest economy can't be bothered to do
anything about climate change.

~~~
Smrchy
The US already has the cleanest of water and air. No need to do anything when
you are leading the others bigly.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Edit: Damn. I think OP was being sarcastic. A quick look through the comment
history shows a different view than the one expressed in the comment. I
removed the downvote.

\---Original comment---

Here's why I downvoted you:

\- It doesn't matter if the water is clean or dirty because that's not what's
causing climate change.

\- The United States was the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2015.
CO2 _is_ a leading cause of climate change.

\- The term "bigly" is often used by people who are proud of their ignorance.
Ignorance isn't something to be proud of.

~~~
kleiba
_The term "bigly"..._

...might also be a marker of sarcasm here.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I also think it was sarcasm, but I agree it was not nicely done.

------
ryanmercer
And _maybe_ a few tens of thousands will survive.

------
a2tech
And how many of them will immediately die? Big gestures like this are
worthless without continuous maintenance and care on the trees.

------
lmilcin
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.

~~~
abraae
Timber buildings, furniture are possible targets for medium term sequestration
of co2 via timber.

More offbeat approaches might include modern giant pyramids built of timber,
perhaps in the Australian outback. As long as they could be secured from fire
and decay.

~~~
bayesian_horse
Maybe it's easier to let them rot in place like it worked in the rainforests
for millions of years?

~~~
abraae
Rotting releases their co2.

All good when things are in balance - but they're not.

To sequester the c02, you need to prevent rot.

~~~
bayesian_horse
Hm, as far as I remember that was the way CO2 was turned into fossil fuel,
depositing layers over layers of vegetation...

~~~
tcbawo
I believe that accumulation happened before microorganisms had evolved to
digest cellulose (?). If we can ever produce a surplus of electricity, we
would ideally sequester carbon in a place other than the bottom of the ocean,
creating a giant Earth-battery. Although it would be ironic if "carbon
sequestration" meant heaping plastic in landfills.

