Tree Planting Day in Ethiopia

Check out this reforestation day in Ethiopia.

Here is something I often see left out of the conversation around tree planting, unfortunately. The local population. COMMUNITY! A lot of time it’s easy to think of forests and imagine National Parks or the Canadian Rockies, places that have very little human activity. But in some of the most critical and endangered forests in the world, like the Amazon or the Congo Basin, human communities play a vital role in maintaining the forest.

When you have a community that understands the social, spiritual, cultural, and economic benefits for having trees, and when you address concerns like poverty that often drive tree cutting, you wind up with local caretakers and protectors of the forest. And they are the most effective stewards of the land that you could ask for.