Billion Tree Campaign Flowers Into Seven Billion Tree Campaign

The billion tree campaign, which was launched by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in 2006 as a response to the threat of global warming, has been so successful that it was expanded on Tuesday to become a 7 billion tree campaign.

To date the initiative, which is under the patronage of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Kenyan Green Belt Movement founder Professor Wangari Maathai and Prince Albert II of Monaco, has broken every target set and has catalyzed tree planting in 155 countries.

The benefits from tree planting are many. Trees not only absorb carbon dioxide, but also play a crucial role in providing a range of products and services to rural and urban populations, including food, timber, fiber, medicines and energy as well as soil fertility, water and biodiversity conservation.

Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme said the following: “The Billion Tree Campaign is UNEP’s call to the nearly seven billion people sharing our planet today to take simple, positive steps to protect our climate. It is a defining issue of our era that can only be tackled through individual and collective action. I am convinced that the new target will be met – one tree at a time.”

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 14, 2008 (ENS) – The UN’s campaign to plant one billion trees has been so successful that it was expanded Tuesday to become a Seven Billion Tree Campaign. In just 18 months, the original Billion Tree Campaign has inspired the planting of two billion trees, double its original target.

The effort is intended to avert rapid global warming by planting trees to absorb the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Deforestation accounts for over 20 percent of the carbon dioxide humans generate. Trees also keep precious rainwater from running off the land and shelter wildlife to combat the ongoin loss of biodiversity.

“When the Billion Tree Campaign was launched at the Climate Convention meeting in Nairobi in 2006, no one could have imagined it could have flowered so fast and so far. But it has given expression to the frustrations but also the hopes of millions of people around the world,” said Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme, which spearheaded the Billion Tree Campaign with the World Agroforestry Centre.

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