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By Annonciata BYUKUSENGE
Rwanda marks the 47th anniversary of National Tree Planting Day, under the theme ‘Plant a Tree, Save the Future’ on 29 October 2022, the activities of celebrating this day held in city of Kigali, Economic Zone area in Gasabo district with the target of planting more than 36 million trees to build resilience to climate change across of the country.
The key message of this day is to continue the awareness to the community that trees produce wood and paper product, tree help control noise pollution, trees make our cities and home more beautiful as the Rwanda Forestry Authority announced.
The members of Rwanda Environmental Journalists (REJ) joined the activities of celebrating this day, takes place at the village level during the monthly Umuganda (community work).
Daddy Sadiki Rubangura is the Executive Director of REJ. Said that “As environmental journalists, we are committed to protecting the environment because climate change experts say the problems that threaten the lives of species, including humanity, caused by the degradation of the world’s forests. I would say droughts, global warming, disasters caused by heavy rains and so on.”
He mentioned that are determined to contribute so that the people of the world in general understand more about the importance of the tree and introduce the measures that Rwanda has and will implement in order to protect the environment and deal with climate change as contained in the Paris agreements and Kigali amendment.
All activities of National Tree Planting Day organized by Ministry of Environment and Rwanda Management Authority with other institutions have in charge the environment conservation like Rwanda Forests Authority and IUCN.
A total of 26,227,930 agroforestry seedlings, 7,609,374 classic forest seedlings, 1,601,931 fruit trees’ and 1,014,400 bamboo trees will be planted. In the City of Kigali, 20 hectares of forest will be rehabilitated while 44,660 native tree seedlings and 191,714 fruit trees will be planted.
The 2022/2023 forest planting season is dedicated to maintaining existing forests and increasing community involvement and ownership in forest restoration and highlight the role of partners and stakeholders.
In 2011, Rwanda committed to bringing two million hectares of land under restoration by 2030 through the Bonn Challenge. Today, 30.4% of Rwanda’s surface area is covered by forests. The Rwanda Government is working with different partners to conduct forest and landscape restoration to meet its commitment under the Bonn Challenge.
