By Mabinty M. Kamara
President Julius Maada Bio has launched the National Tree Planting Project which aims to plant five million trees in Sierra Leone in the next four years. The project was launched on Friday, June 5th, to mark the World Environment Day.
Bio launched the new environmental initiative at Motormeh, Regent, the site of one of Sierra Leone’s worst environmental disasters. In August 2017, hundreds of people perished in that location when part of a mountain moved down on them during heavy rains.
President Bio said the new project is aimed at minimizing the “adverse impact of climate change,” which has been partly blamed for that incident.
“In general, the project is aimed at planting five million trees in approximately 14, 706 hectares of degraded lands and coastal areas in the entire country. The project is expected to last for four years and the planting of trees will be done in 5 Phases,” Bio said.
He added: “Phase 1, which commences this year, will end in June 2021 with 1.2 million trees planted. Phases 2 to 5 will start in May 2021 and end in June 2024 and 3.8 Million trees will be planted.”
Sierra Leone is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to environmental disasters. In 2017, the country was ranked 3rd most vulnerable in the world to the effects of climate change, after West African neighbor Guinea Bissau and Bangladesh in Asia.
Sierra Leone has lost a huge part of its forest cover in the last decades due to deforestation, which has been fuelled by mass migration into urban areas, since the end of the war.
“The co-benefits from health, agriculture, employment, water conservation, to economic development, are too numerous to name in this brief statement. It will initially target 10,000 youths comprising at least 50 percent women,” Bio noted in a statement, while talking about the importance of the tree planting project.
He added that the National Reforestation and Afforestation Project, which was included in the 2020 budget, would benefit the whole country, noting that it would be pursued along with Government’s commitment to creating jobs in rural communities.
“This project is critical for various reasons: It will increase forest cover, enhance the capacity of carbon sequestration and biodiversity, and help reduce the adverse impact of climate change on the country; it will prevent the displacement of populations caused by flooding, as the trees will curtail water from heavy downpours; it will reduce early and erratic rainfall patterns leading to reduced flooding and wind,” Bio said.
Executive Chairman for Environment Protection Agency, Dr Bondi Gevao, said that the ongoing climate-related impacts were reminders of the need to take responsibility to preserve forests and wildlife habitats. He noted that trees and forests played an essential role in mitigating the impacts of climate change and assured of his agency’s commitment to operationalizing the vision of the government’s agenda on protecting the environment.
Country Representative for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Samuel Doe, said that it was auspicious that Sierra Leone was marking the launch of the tree planting and afforestation project. He noted that the UNDP was standing with the government of Sierra Leone to ensure the planting of trees to regenerate the planet and the environment in Sierra Leone, adding that humans were obligated to sustain the environment.
Environmental conservation against climate change is in cluster seven of the country’s Medium Term National Development Plan. It is also included in global development agendas like the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
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