Green Legacy Initiative enhancing nation’s water resource: Minister

Addis Ababa, March 16, 2024 (FBC) – Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative (GLI) has been playing a paramount role in improving the nation’s surface and ground water as well as maintaining the safety of dams, Water and Energy Minister Habtamu Etefa said.

Ethiopia is implementing the initiative, which is considered as a massive campaign aimed at combating environmental degradation and keeping Ethiopia as the water tower of Africa, it was indicated.

The plant seedling campaign as part of GLI, was promoted by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2019 to reach national green environmental goals, and has so far planted over 32.5 billion tree seedlings.

Habtamu indicated that the Green Legacy Initiative is playing a major role in improving the spring water resources of the country that have been affected by climate change, ENA reported.

Moreover, this national environmental initiative has significantly resulted in increasing the level of surface and underground water, the minister revealed.

He further mentioned the Green Legacy Initiative is also helping dams are not filled with silt by preventing soil erosion.

“The Green Legacy Initiative that we are implementing is giving a life-sustaining for our water resources. This is instrumental to the hydrologic cycle by bringing about better water storage.

Therefore, we are witnessing the results of this initiative on our rivers and water resources because of the massive tree planting campaign carried out in the last five years.”

Besides, the initiative is supporting the nation to mitigate the drought induced threat that has been caused by climate change, the minister elaborated.

To this end, Habtamu added the Ethiopian government has embarked on implementing various projects to deal with droughts in some parts of the country.

He said that underground and surface water projects have been built in more than 80 districts of the country.

Furthermore, the minister pointed out that the government is working hard in in ensuring access to safe drinking water to the citizens, adding that special attention has been paid to the completion of the projects in this regard.