While some talk, others act!
Image courtesy of packpackerinfo.net
Africa’s Sahel has been on the front line of the much discussed global warming trend for the past 30 years or more. What is undeniable is that the droughts are getting worse as the weather gets more extreme.
To fight this trend the leadership of Eritrea, one of the world’s smallest, newest, most underdeveloped countries, started universal, community-based water and soil conservation along with reforestation.
So they did it again: 126′000 Trees have been planted in Eritrea during a community based reforestation program. They do it every Year! High school students constructed about 2,500 cubic meters of embankments and over 109,000 terraces, in addition to the planting of 22,000 different types of tree seedlings and the digging of about 800 meter-long canal for the installation of water pipelines during a Summer Work Program.
Every summer all the high school students in the country spend six weeks building these walls and planting trees. The army, mainly composed of the youth doing their national service, is the main contributor to these efforts, building most of the micro dams and being continuously engaged in soil conservation and reforestation.
When the Italians first colonized Eritrea over a 120 years ago, 30 percent of Eritrea was covered by forests. At the time of independence in 1991, less than 2 percent of Eritrea was forested. Today Eritrea is producing 55% of it’s own food consumption thanks to irrigation from these installations and the percentage of own produce is continuosly increasing.
Read this Article! It is informative and inspiring: If they can do it, everyone can do it!
