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Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, is on a mission to plant a million trees over the next two years, increasing vegetation in her city by fifty percent while shoring up eroding riverbanks and increasing biodiversity. "This isn't just about planting trees; it's about growing trees, and it's about ensuring that each one of us is part of the process," she says. "A million trees is our city's small contribution to increasing the much-needed global carbon sink."
This talk was part of the Countdown Global Launch on 10.10.2020. (Watch the full event here: .) Countdown is TED's global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. The goal: to build a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, in the race to a zero-carbon world. Get involved at
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climate matters
Yes it does, but a million trees in ten years isn’t even a tiny fraction of what’s required.
@JasonBarton thats prob true
Planting trees is good for everything, but it won’t stop climate change. Calculate: to do that, you would need to plant all land area in the world in trees… in several layers of trees!
Saying it so people don’t have an illusion that planting trees alone can solve that particular problem. It will solve some other problems though. Although the best is to let the natural forest re-grow. Planted forest usually has small biodiversity of plants, but the re-growth from remaining natural forest has much higher biodiversity. So it should be preferable strategy
Mr Beast
I was searching for someone to say it.
Stay blessed
I love you for this! Chris from Toronto, Canada.
We should all be planting trees (and food plants too) Everywhere!
Same!
Trees ≠ Field
This is great news for our planet! Thank goodness, good news in 2020!
Let’s plant trees !!!
@Kate S I agree. This is one of the small actions that the Human Being can do for the planet. But even if it is something that seems irrelevant, but it is not, it is something that is extremely important for the planet! It would be great if all countries came together to set up an international fund to not only plant trees, but also to solve problems like climate change, combating greenhouse gas emissions and etc. We should all be aware that we are “killing” our planet ourselves! And if the new generations do not pay attention to this, there could be serious consequences.
Good idea to make a rule in egypt every citizen 18+ should pay price of 10 fruity/wood trees to get identity approved
Or plant 10 trees and keep care for them for 3 weeks until roots works fine
We would plant billion tree every year and in 10-15 year we can benfit of wood and fruits to invent jops and manufacturing
Pakistan planted over a billion trees under 15 years. Well done Pakistan
May Allah bless you And keep you safe and healthy ameen
These peoples are true angles , saving the mother nature.. great work guys keep it up..
I just finished watching The Lorax lol
Good movie btw.
JUst ask Hillary for the money she stole from Haiti. That’s gotta be 10 million trees.
i like to plant something’s.but i dont have the land for a big tree
I was impressed by your effort.. After collecting these tiny efforts, we can fix the abnormal climate gradually.
I am so proud of people and countries and take the real action, planting trees. Awesome.
The Midwest in the USA was once a very lush forest from Minnesota all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Useful for quality of life. Useless for climate change. Need to plant like.. billions of trees every day to offset CO2 emissions.
Well done Mayor!
My colleagues and I are about starting the planting of 1,000 trees in Benin City.