On July 31, 2025 C.E., Ethiopia launched one of the most ambitious single-day tree-planting efforts in recorded history — mobilizing millions of citizens to put 700 million seedlings in the ground from dawn to dusk. By early morning, nearly 15 million Ethiopians had already planted hundreds of millions of seedlings. Government offices closed for the day. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed planted trees in Jimma alongside schoolchildren, grandparents, and civil servants deployed nationwide. The effort is part of Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative, which Abiy launched in 2019 C.E. with a goal of planting 50 billion trees by 2026 C.E.
At a glance
- Tree planting Ethiopia: The July 31, 2025 C.E. campaign targeted 700 million seedlings in a single day — part of a 7.5 billion seedling goal for the current rainy season alone.
- Green Legacy Initiative: Launched in 2019 C.E. by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the program has reportedly facilitated the planting of over 40 billion seedlings since its inception, with a cumulative target exceeding 47.5 billion this year.
- Civic mobilization: Participants ranged from young children to people in their seventies, with government workers, students, and ordinary residents volunteering across towns, cities, and rural areas throughout the country.
Why Ethiopia is planting so many trees
Ethiopia’s forests once covered a large portion of the country. Over the past century, that coverage collapsed — stripped by agricultural expansion, charcoal production, and population pressure. The consequences have been severe: soil erosion, declining crop yields, increased flooding, and communities left more exposed to the effects of a warming climate.
The Green Legacy Initiative is a direct response to that history. It aims to restore degraded land, reduce carbon emissions, improve water retention, and rebuild ecosystems that millions of people depend on for food and livelihoods.
Forests also matter for food security in ways that go beyond the obvious. Healthy tree cover stabilizes soils, regulates local rainfall patterns, and supports the pollinators that sustain smallholder agriculture. For a country where most people still farm, trees are not a luxury — they are infrastructure. The initiative integrates agroforestry, urban greening, soil and water conservation, and livelihood programs, making it one of the most comprehensive nature-based strategies on the continent.
A campaign built on community, not just policy
What sets the Green Legacy Initiative apart from typical government programs is its emphasis on civic participation. Planting days are designed as national events, not bureaucratic exercises.
Across the country, residents arrived before sunrise to claim their patch of ground. Grandparents planted alongside grandchildren. Teenagers participated for the second or third consecutive year. These scenes reflect something the numbers alone can’t capture: for many Ethiopians, planting a tree is a statement about the future they want to inhabit — an act that connects generations, not just a checkbox on a government target sheet.
That emotional dimension matters for the long-term health of the program. Reforestation campaigns that rely solely on state mandates tend to falter when political winds shift. Campaigns rooted in genuine civic identity tend to survive them.
The questions experts are asking
The Green Legacy Initiative has drawn international attention — and serious scrutiny. Forest ecologists have questioned whether planting 700 million trees in a single day is logistically feasible, and raised concerns about the absence of technical oversight in site selection, the lack of published data on seedling survival rates, and insufficient attention to matching species to local ecosystems.
Survival rate is the number that ultimately determines whether this campaign becomes a genuine environmental recovery or a well-photographed disappointment. Seedlings planted in the wrong soil, without follow-up care, or in the wrong mix of species can fail within months. Independent researchers and organizations like the IUCN have consistently found that large-scale tree-planting programs succeed only when planting is matched by monitoring, community ownership, and long-term land management commitments.
Ethiopia’s government has not yet released transparent survival rate data, which makes the program’s actual ecological impact difficult to assess. That accountability gap is worth watching closely.
The broader context
The Green Legacy Initiative also carries political weight that complicates any simple reading of the campaign. Ethiopia has faced years of devastating internal conflict, particularly in the Tigray and Amhara regions, which have displaced millions and strained public trust in state institutions. A campaign that closes government offices and sends ministers into fields alongside ordinary citizens serves multiple purposes simultaneously — ecological restoration and national image management are not mutually exclusive, but they are worth distinguishing.
Globally, the initiative has drawn attention from climate policymakers watching how large-scale, nature-based solutions can be implemented at national scale. UNEP’s Decade on Ecosystem Restoration has highlighted community-led reforestation as one of the most cost-effective climate tools available. Ethiopia’s program, for all its unresolved questions, represents one of the most ambitious attempts anywhere to put that principle into practice.
The Bonn Challenge, a global effort to restore 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 C.E., faces similar questions about verification and long-term accountability. What’s clear is that millions of people got up before sunrise and planted trees. That matters. What happens next matters more.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Fana Broadcasting Corporate
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights at COP30: 160 million hectares recognized
- Ghana’s new marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on climate
About this article
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