Jun 3 2009
The Billion Tree Campaign has just passed the four billion mark, in a crucial step towards its target of seven billion trees planted by the end of 2009.
The milestone was reached following confirmation from the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture that an additional 687 million trees were planted in 2008 under the country's nationwide tree planting campaign – part of the one billion trees that were planted over the last 52 days.
The total has also been boosted by individual tree planting efforts by people around the world taking part in a global tree planting drive for World Environment Day, a hands-on way for communities to urge world leaders to "seal the deal" at the crucial UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.
The campaign hit the three billion mark less than two month earlier, when the Turkish Ministry of Environment and Forests announced that collective efforts by the Government, NGOs and civil society had led to the planting of over 300 million trees during 2008.
Other recent tree registrations include Peru, with over 41 million trees planted through its National Tree Campaign of Afforestation and Reforestation, the China Green Foundation, which confirmed having planted 181 million trees so far and the Kenya Commercial Bank which planted an additional 200,000 trees during its 2009 Community Day.
To date, tree plantings have taken place in 166 countries around the world as part of the campaign. The latest participants in the campaign include the Pakistan Ministry of Environment and Forests, which has pledged to have 120 million trees planted by the end of 2009. In addition, the Ministry plans to launch a 2.3 billion tree planting campaign with a target of increasing the country's forest cover by 1 per cent by 2015. The Government of Turkmenistan has also joined the campaign with a pledge to plant close to 1.5 million trees this year.
The World Organization of the Scouts Movement will also be planting trees under the campaign as part of their World Environment Day activities on June 5 in several countries including Australia, Mexico and Brazil.
Also on that day, the United Nations Peacekeeping missions will be joining the campaign and planting trees with its field missions in East-Timor, Ivory Coast, Darfur, Lebanon, Haiti, Congo, Georgia, Liberia, and Western Sahara amongst others.
In a call to further global action, UNEP is inviting everyone from civil society to the business community to Governments to plant trees as part of the UNite to Combat Climate Change initiative, and to register their commitments to plant on the campaign's website: www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign
UNEP is also mobilizing action through the Twitter for Trees campaign, whereby UNEP will plant one tree for every twitterer who follows www.twitter.com/UNEPandYou by World Environment Day on 5 June.
Under the Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign, people are encouraged to enter tree planting commitments online with the objective of planting at least seven billion trees worldwide by December 2009 – one for every person on the planet.