'World needs a billion trees'

2006-11-09 10:34

Nairobi - The United Nations and Africa's Nobel laureate, environmentalist Wangari Maathai, launched a project on Wednesday to plant a billion trees worldwide to help fight climate change and poverty.

Kenya's Wangari Maathai, who in 2004 became the first African woman and first "green" activist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, urged people from the United States to Uganda to plant trees to combat global warming and to make a long-term commitment.

She said: "Anybody can dig a hole, anybody can put a tree in that hole and water it. And everybody can make sure that the tree they plant survives."

She was speaking on the sidelines of a UN meeting on climate change in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Maathai planted 30m trees

She said: "There are six billion of us. So even if only one-sixth of us each plant a tree, we will definitely reach the target next year."

Maathai, 66, became Africa's best known environmentalist after her Green Belt Movement planted about 30 million trees around Africa in a drive to slow deforestation and erosion.

Her work was praised by the Nobel committee as a step to help end poverty and avert potential conflicts over scarce building materials and firewood.

Some 189 nations were meeting in Nairobi to explore options for a global agreement to combat climate change, which experts said was worsened by rampant deforestation around the globe.

Planting trees 'a win proposition'

Achim Steiner, the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said the delegates' discussions were important, but also complicated, slow and hard for the average person to follow.

He said: "But at the same time as governments negotiate, citizens can act. Planting trees is a win, win, win, win, win proposition, and there are few of those in our world today."

Steiner said planting a billion trees would soak up some 250 million tons of carbon dioxide warming the atmosphere.

He said: "It is a gesture more powerful than any report we can produce, or any political statement we can make." The UN offered encouragement, but no funds for the initiative.

About 13 million hectares of forest were cut down every year, mostly in Africa and South America, and Simons said that could have dire consequences for everyone in the world.

Simons said: "If you put your head inside a black plastic rubbish bag and breathe in and out five times, that is what the CO2 concentration is going to be like in 50 years if we don't start planting more trees."

- Reuters