8 November 2006 – A campaign to plant a billion
trees within a year was launched at the United Nations Climate Change Conference
in Nairobi, Kenya, today in a bid to encourage all sectors of society, from
concerned citizens to philanthropic corporations, to take small but practical
steps to combat what is probably the key challenge of the 21st century.
“Action does not need to be confined to the corridors of
the negotiation halls,” UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
Executive Director Achim Steiner said, noting that intergovernmental talks on
tackling climate change can often be difficult, protracted and sometimes
frustrating, especially for those looking on.
“But we cannot and must not lose heart,” he added. “The
campaign, which aims to plant a minimum of 1 billion trees in 2007, offers a
direct and straight-forward path down which all sectors of society can step to
contribute to meeting the climate change challenge.”
The Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign, backed
by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Green Belt Movement activist Wangari Maathai,
Prince Albert II of Monaco and the World Agroforestry Centre-ICRAF, is being
coordinated by UNEP.
Rehabilitating tens of millions of hectares of degraded
land and reforesting the Earth is necessary to restore the productivity of soil
and water resources, and expanding tree cover will mitigate the build-up of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, a global warming greenhouse gas.
To make up for the loss of trees in the past decade, 130
million hectares, or 1.3 million square kilometres, an area as large as Peru,
would have to be reforested, amounting to planting some 14 billion trees every
year for 10 consecutive years.
“The Billion Tree Campaign is but an acorn, but it can
also be practically and symbolically a significant expression of our common
determination to make a difference in developing and developed countries alike,”
Mr. Steiner said. “We have but a short time to avert serious climate change. We
need action.
“We need to plant trees alongside other concrete
community-minded actions and in doing so send a signal to the corridors of
political power across the globe that the watching and waiting is over – that
countering climate change can take root via one billion small but significant
acts in our gardens, parks, countryside and rural areas,” he added.
Other actions include less driving, switching off lights
in empty rooms and turning off electrical appliances rather than leaving them on
standby. If everyone in the United Kingdom switched off rather than left TV sets
and other appliances on standby it is estimated it would save enough electricity
to power close to 3 million homes for a year.
The idea for the campaign was inspired by Ms. Maathai.
When a corporate group in the United States told her it was planning to plant a
million trees, she replied: “That’s great, but what we really need is to plant a
billion trees.”
People and entities from around the world are encouraged
to enter pledges on a web site www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign. The campaign is
open to all – individuals, children and youth groups, schools, community groups,
non-governmental organizations, farmers, private sector organizations, local
authorities, and national governments. Each pledge can be anything from a single
tree to 10 million trees.
The campaign identifies four key areas for planting:
degraded natural forests and wilderness areas; farms and rural landscapes;
sustainably managed plantations; and urban environments but it can also begin
with a single tree in a back garden. Advice on tree planting will be made
available via the website.
Source: UN News Service
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