Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Needs to Turn into Global Initiative: Iran’s Ambassador to Ethiopia
Addis Ababa, July 17, 2023 (FBC) – Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative needs to turn into global campaign to save the planet earth from climate change and global warming, Iran’s Ambassador to Ethiopia Samad Ali Lakizadeh said.
Ethiopia is undertaking a historic and record breaking of planting 500 million seedlings in a single day across the country with the participation of all segments of the society and members of the diplomatic community based in Addis Ababa.
In an exclusive interview with ENA, Lakizadeh said that the international community and international organizations need to support the Green Legacy Initiative as part of mitigating the global climate change efforts.
He added such initiative is important to foster development, help the society become safe and healthy from climate change and so on.
“In fact it is a very important initiative, today we started to plant 500 million seedlings in one day all around Ethiopia and I personally as Ambassador of Iran I am very proud to be part of this big and important initiative.”
Appreciating the initiative, he said it is initiated by Ethiopians; but nowadays, worldwide people are aware of this initiative and even the neighboring countries are also taking lessons from an experience from this initiative.
Regarding the support from the global community, the ambassador said “First of all, I think the international media should cover this initiative to give this lesson to others not only in the African continent but also all around the world. International organizations, United Nations and others also should appreciate and also should help, support, this initiative.”
“Ethiopian initiative, by the support of the international community, and international organizations, regional organizations, we have to turn it to a global effort, to a global initiative.”
In such a way, he added, we can help our planet to be safer from global climate change and global warming.
Similarly, French Ambassador to Ethiopia, Rémi Maréchaux said “Ethiopia is already an example regarding its energy mix with this initiative to sensitize everybody so that all citizens understand that they can be active at the level to fight climate change by planting trees; so it is an initiative we can only support.”
Climate change is a global matter and that is why all countries managed to sign the Paris agreement and now it is a responsibility to implement it, he recalled.
It is important for everybody to understand that climate change is not something you cannot act against and that each country has the responsibility to work in fighting climate change, he pointed out.
It is to be recalled that Ethiopia planted a record number of more than 350 million trees in a single day in 12 hours on July 29, 2019.
The Green Legacy Initiative is a flagship program initiated by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in June 2019 with a target of planting 20 billion seedlings within a period of four years, where the target was surpassed to 25 billion.