When Halima Kedir first began planting trees, she was met with scepticism and even mockery. “My neighbours discouraged me,” she recalls, sitting on a wooden chair in her garden, which is lush with the trees and fruits she has planted – banana, olive and grevillea among them.
“They thought I was striving for nothing, but with time, many are realising that trees can be part of the solution to our problems as a way to fight climate change and food insecurity,” she says.
Kedir, 35, who lives in the Berbere district of Ethiopia’s Oromia region, became an accidental environmentalist after planting thousands of trees – she has lost count of how many – inspiring others to follow suit.
In a nation with a history of large-scale deforestation, Kedir’s work has not been easy. It has required moral courage and practical endurance. As her trees took root and her surroundings became greener, the people who doubted began to respect what she was doing, she says. “Now, everything has changed. Those who tried to dissuade me are envious of my effort and commitment.”
For Kedir, trees are more than just plants, they are living companions and part of a solution to some of the challenges her community faces in one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations.
From the turn of the century to 2025, Ethiopia lost 560,000 hectares (2,160 sq miles) of its tree cover, due to the expansion of agriculture, commercial logging and the use of charcoal as fuel. This has resulted in devastating impacts on biodiversity, soil quality and water resources as well as increasing the risk of climate-related disasters.
But thanks to a number of initiatives introduced by the Ethiopian government, including a massive tree-planting scheme known as the Green Legacy Initiative (GLI) in 2019, the rate of deforestation has slowed. Between 2013 and 2023, the annual deforestation rate fell from 92,000 hectares to 27,703 hectares. Meanwhile, forest cover has increased from 15.5% to 23.6% during the same period.
Through the GLI, the government claims to have planted 48bn trees in seven years, including a reported record-breaking 353m seedlings in one day. Its goal is to plant 50bn trees by 2030.
Kedir’s neighbour, Fate Abdulahi, has joined in, after seeing what she has achieved. “She proved us wrong and she has become a role model and someone willing to find local solutions to our issues.”
Many in the community believe that being Oromo, a society known for guddifachaa – the traditional practice of adopting a child and integrating them into Oromo society – has contributed to Kedir’s success in caring for her trees.
She describes her relationship with the seedlings in maternal terms. “Just like we adopt a child in our tradition, I see them like my own children,” she says.
Despite severe water shortages in her area, Kedir continues to nurture her seedlings diligently. To ensure some of the trees survive and thrive, she has to walk for about an hour to fetch water.
Kedir’s 13-year-old son, Anwar Hassen, speaks of her with pride and hopes to follow in her footsteps. “I want to make a lifelong commitment in the fight against climate change,” he says.
Thousands of households in nearby kebeles, or neighbourhoods, have also joined the tree-planting initiative. With the help of WaterAid Ethiopia, the once-degraded land is transforming into greener terrain and serving as a model across the east African nation.
Alebachew Adem, director of WaterAid Ethiopia, says: “To date, approximately 55,000 indigenous tree seedlings have been distributed to households and community institutions across the area.” He adds that 85% of the seedlings have grown successfully.
“In dry land and climate-vulnerable areas such as Berbere, these efforts help communities build resilience against the increasing impacts of climate change,” he says.
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Survival rates of seedlings is what counts in the long term, but data is hard to find. In 2022, the government-backed GLI technical committee said the average survival rate of seedlings was 83.4% in 2019 and 79% a year later, but there has been some scepticism over such high success rates.
In research conducted in Asia, nearly half of all reforestation trees planted did not survive more than five years. Researchers who examined 15 tree-planting schemes in Ethiopia with targets also found that 10 of them had achieved less than 50% success.
Yitebitu Moges, co-ordinator of the REDD+ deforestation scheme at the UN’s Environment Programme in Ethiopia, says the greatest success has been in the highlands and that a study of the rates of survival is under way. “We are collecting data and are now committing ourselves to a systematic assessment of survival rates,” he says.
He says that one of the greatest achievements has been a change in mindset in the country. “Our history has shifted from deforestation to forestation. People are becoming more and more aware that deforestation is damaging.
“The world needs to appreciate this is a huge undertaking by the government,” he adds. “Even if half of the trees that have been planted survive, we are already gaining moisture, keeping soil and sequestering carbon.”
Ethiopia’s commitment to fighting the climate crisis continues to expand at national and international levels. Two years ago, the Ethiopian parliament set up the Green Legacy and Landscape Restoration Special Fund, allocating between 0.5% and 1% of its 2.339tn birr annual federal budget – between about £50m and £110m – to restoring degraded landscapes.
Teshome Soromessa, an environmentalist at Addis Ababa University, says forest restoration and tree planting are national priorities, bringing together communities, civil society organisations, universities, government institutions and development partners. He says Kedir’s commitment is a powerful example of how individual citizens can become catalysts for environmental restoration.
In recognition of Ethiopia’s emergence as one of Africa’s leading green energy nations, the country of more than 130 million people has been chosen to stage the 32nd UN climate summit (Cop32) in Addis Ababa in November 2027.
As it rushes to host thousands of environmentalists from around the world, Kedir has a message to those who will attend. “They should give the issues of water and trees, which many in such communities lack, the priority they deserve,” she says.
