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Yonas Biru, PhD
To start with, the Prime Minister’s number is off by 20 billion from what the Ethiopian Minister for Agriculture (Omar Husen) told us in 2021. According to Africa News, the Minister said, “Over 10 billion trees were planted in the first two years of the ‘Green Legacy’ project. The aim is to plant 20 billion trees by 2022.” The current news is that the nation is planting 500 million or (half a billion) in 2023. Give or take a billion, the PM’s claim differs from the figure the Minister of Agriculture provided by 20 billion.
A friend from Ethiopia sent me some interesting figures that can help us throw some light on the fog of the official numbers. Let us call my friend ጉድበል አለወሎየ. I double-checked and confirmed his numbers and added some more to complete the picture and provide a rich perspective.
Let us do some basic arithmetic. The UN FAO estimates 1111 Trees per hectare (111,100 trees per square kilometer) is what is a viable and sustainable target. Rainforest Action Network provides a figure that is a bit lower – 1000 trees per hectare or 100,000 trees per square kilometer. Others suggest as high as 1800 trees per hectare or 180,000 trees per square kilometer. Let us take the average. That comes to 1,300 trees per hectare or 130,000 trees per square kilometer.
Ethiopia’s total land area is 1,112,000 square kilometers. If the government decides to use every inch of the nation’s land for trees only, it would be able to plant 123.5 billion trees. The good news is that in 2017 (a year before the Prime Minister came to office), Ethiopia had 12,580,200 hectares of land covered with trees. This comes to 16.4 billion trees, assuming 1,300 trees per hectare.
If one musters the willingness to believe the Prime Minister’s figure that the nation has planted 50 billion new trees since he came to office, the total number of trees (old and new) will be 66.4 billion. This means 54 percent of the nation’s land is covered with trees. Is this credible? Let us compare the 54 percent figure with data from other nations and regions.
According to Global Forest Watch, Russia (a nation that has earned the nickname “Land of the Most Trees”) has 45 percent of its land mass covered with trees. The US Department of Agriculture estimates forest land covers about a third (33.3 percent) of the US’ total land area. The corresponding figure for Europe is 39 percent. The average figures for African and Asian countries are 21 percent and 18.5 percent, respectively.
ጠቅላዩ ቅጠሉን ነው ውይስ ዛፉን የሚቆጥሩት ያሰኛል. ለማንኛውም with the courtesy of ጉድ በል አለ ወሎየ, we are reminded that political leaders may lie, but numbers do not
