In the Berbere district of Ethiopia's Oromia region, a woman named Halima Kedir began planting trees in her garden while her neighbors laughed — and in doing so, quietly rewrote what was possible. Against a backdrop of decades of deforestation that stripped Ethiopia of hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, her stubborn, solitary labor became a communal reckoning with land, survival, and responsibility. What one person tends with devotion, it turns out, can become what an entire community learns to believe in.
Ethiopian woman's tree-planting defiance sparks community climate action
They thought I was striving for nothing, but with time, many are realising
Mark
Why does Kedir's story matter beyond her own garden? Isn't this just one person doing good work?
Mimi
Because she changed her community's mind. That's the hard part. The trees themselves are important, but what shifted was skepticism into belief—neighbors seeing that trees could actually solve problems they face. That's how movements start.
Luke
But we should be careful here. The national numbers are impressive—forest cover up from 15.5 to 23.6 percent—but survival rates are disputed. The government says 83 percent in 2019, 79 percent in 2020. The U.N. is still collecting data. We don't actually know if those seedlings are staying alive.
Mimi
Fair. And that matters because if survival is lower than reported, the real progress is smaller. But Kedir's local work—85 percent survival on 55,000 seedlings—that's documented by WaterAid. So at least we know the model works at scale in her region.
Mark
What's the actual climate benefit? Is this reversing deforestation or just slowing it down?
Luke
Ethiopia lost 560,000 hectares between 2000 and 2025. Annual deforestation fell from 92,000 hectares in 2013 to 27,703 in 2023. So yes, it's slowing. But the country is still losing forest. The Green Legacy Initiative has planted 48 billion trees since 2019—that's a lot of trees—but we don't know how many of those are actually alive and growing.
Mimi
The point is that Kedir showed it's possible to do this work locally, with limited resources, and have it stick. That's the model that's spreading now. The national budget allocation—0.5 to 1 percent of the federal budget—suggests the government is serious about sustaining it.
Mark
So what's the next test?
Luke
Whether those seedlings survive the next five years. Whether the budget actually gets spent. Whether survival rates improve or stay flat. And whether communities like Kedir's can keep the momentum without external funding.
Mimi
And whether other women in other districts decide to do what she did.
Der Puls
- Ethiopia has lost 560,000 hectares of tree cover since 2000, and in arid communities like Berbere, the consequences — eroded soil, food insecurity, climate vulnerability — are not abstract but daily.
- Halima Kedir faced open mockery from neighbors who saw her tree-planting as futile, yet she continued hauling water for an hour at a time to keep her seedlings alive, treating each one like an adopted child.
- Her persistence cracked the skepticism: neighbors who once ridiculed her began planting their own trees, and with WaterAid Ethiopia's support, 55,000 indigenous seedlings have now been distributed across local households and institutions.
- The national Green Legacy Initiative has amplified this grassroots momentum, reporting a drop in annual deforestation from 92,000 to 27,703 hectares and a rise in forest cover from 15.5% to 23.6% since 2019.
- Survival rate figures from the government's tree-planting campaign remain contested, and researchers are still working to establish reliable data — meaning the true scale of progress is real but not yet fully measurable.
- Ethiopia's Parliament has now institutionalized the effort, allocating up to 1% of the federal budget to landscape restoration — a signal that what began in one woman's garden has reached the architecture of national policy.
In the Berbere district of Ethiopia's Oromia region, a woman named Halima Kedir began planting trees in her garden while her neighbors laughed — and in doing so, quietly rewrote what was possible. Against a backdrop of decades of deforestation that stripped Ethiopia of hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, her stubborn, solitary labor became a communal reckoning with land, survival, and responsibility. What one person tends with devotion, it turns out, can become what an entire community learns to believe in.
Halima Kedir began planting trees in her garden in Ethiopia's Berbere district and her neighbors mocked her openly. She planted anyway — banana trees, olive trees, grevillea trees — until the mockery gave way to admiration, and the admiration gave way to action. One neighbor, Fate Abdulahi, who had been among the skeptics, eventually called her a role model. "She proved us wrong," he said.
The work was not easy. Water is scarce in the arid region, and Kedir sometimes traveled an hour just to fetch enough to keep her seedlings alive. She described the labor through the Oromo tradition of guddifachaa — the adoption and raising of a child. For her, the comparison was not poetic; it was practical. The trees required that level of commitment.
What grew from her garden eventually spread across the community. With support from WaterAid Ethiopia, approximately 55,000 indigenous tree seedlings have been distributed to households and institutions in the area, with an 85 percent survival rate reported by WaterAid's country director. The effort sits within a larger national story: Ethiopia's Green Legacy Initiative, launched in 2019, claims to have planted 48 billion trees, reduced annual deforestation from 92,000 to 27,703 hectares, and raised forest cover from 15.5 to 23.6 percent.
Those numbers carry some uncertainty. Researchers and UN officials have noted that survival rate data remains incomplete, and systematic assessments are still underway. But the underlying reality — that trees stabilize soil, retain moisture, and buffer communities against drought — is not in dispute. In a country acutely exposed to climate shocks, this is infrastructure, not ornamentation.
Ethiopia's Parliament has since established a dedicated restoration fund, allocating between 0.5 and 1 percent of the federal budget to degraded landscapes. Kedir's message to her government remains simple: prioritize water and trees. The movement she sparked — from one mocked woman to a national policy commitment — suggests that visible, local change has a way of pulling people toward possibility.
Halima Kedir started planting trees in Ethiopia's Oromia region, in the Berbere district, and her neighbors thought she was wasting her time. They mocked her openly. She kept going anyway—banana trees, olive trees, grevillea trees, thousands of them—until the skepticism in her community turned into something else entirely: admiration, then action, then a movement.
Ethiopia has been losing forest at a steady clip. Between 2000 and 2025, the country shed roughly 560,000 hectares of tree cover—an area the size of about 2,160 square miles—as farmland expanded, logging continued, and people cut trees for charcoal. Against that backdrop, Kedir's work in her own garden became a visible counterargument. She said the early resistance was crushing. "My neighbours discouraged me," she recalled. "They thought I was striving for nothing, but with time, many are realising that trees can be part of the solution to our problems as a way to fight climate change and food insecurity." One of those neighbors, Fate Abdulahi, eventually became a believer. "She proved us wrong, and she has become a role model and someone willing to find local solutions to our issues," he said.
Keeping seedlings alive in an arid region demands relentless work. Water is scarce, and Kedir sometimes spends an hour traveling just to fetch enough to sustain her trees. She frames this labor through the Oromo tradition of guddifachaa—the practice of adopting and raising a child. "Just like we adopt a child in our tradition, I see them like my own children," she said. The comparison is not metaphorical for her; it describes the actual commitment required.
What started as one woman's garden has scaled. With support from WaterAid Ethiopia, the tree-planting campaign has spread into thousands of households across nearby kebeles—the neighborhood-level administrative units in Ethiopia. As of now, approximately 55,000 indigenous tree seedlings have been distributed to households and community institutions in the area. According to WaterAid Ethiopia's director, Alebachew Adem, 85 percent of those seedlings have survived and grown. The national government has also moved. The Green Legacy Initiative, launched in 2019, reports that annual deforestation fell from 92,000 hectares in 2013 to 27,703 in 2023. Forest cover has risen from 15.5 percent to 23.6 percent. Officials say the campaign has planted 48 billion trees since its launch and aims to reach 50 billion by 2030.
At the national level, Parliament established the Green Legacy and Landscape Restoration Special Fund and allocated between 0.5 and 1 percent of Ethiopia's annual federal budget—drawn from a total of 2.339 trillion birr—to degraded landscapes. Trees matter in arid regions for concrete reasons: they stabilize soil, hold moisture, sustain biodiversity, and reduce the damage from drought and erosion. In a country especially exposed to climate shocks, expanding tree cover is not ornamental work; it is survival infrastructure.
There are questions about the numbers. The government-backed Green Legacy Initiative technical committee estimated seedling survival at 83.4 percent for 2019 and 79 percent for 2020, but those figures have been disputed. Yitebitu Moges, who coordinates the REDD+ deforestation scheme for the United Nations Environment Programme in Ethiopia, acknowledged the uncertainty. "We are collecting data and are now committing ourselves to a systematic assessment of survival rates," he said. The work is real, the scale is real, but the precision of the accounting remains incomplete.
Kedir's message to her government is direct: prioritize water and trees. These are the things her community lacks most acutely. The movement she sparked—from mockery to model to mechanism—suggests that when people see the possibility of change in their own landscape, they will move toward it. What remains to be seen is whether the national commitment, now backed by budget and policy, can sustain the momentum that one woman's defiance ignited.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
Just like we adopt a child in our tradition, I see them like my own children.— Halima Kedir, describing her commitment to nurturing seedlings
She proved us wrong, and she has become a role model and someone willing to find local solutions to our issues.— Fate Abdulahi, Kedir's neighbor
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