Ethiopian Parliament to Approve Special Fund For Green Legacy

Ethiopian parliament is expected to approve a new bill which would make it mandatory for the government to allocate a specific portion of its budget for green legacy. A bill has been submitted to the Ethiopian House of People’s Representatives that requires the federal government to allocate zero point five to one percent of its annual budget to a special fund for green footprint and rehabilitation of degraded land.

The special fund will be distributed to the federal government and the states according to the criteria issued by the Ministry of Finance, and the money will be transferred to the beneficiaries every three months based on their performance. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture is overseeing this development.

Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative, a national reforestation program, plans to plant more than 6.5 billion tree seedlings this upcoming planting season, according to Adefres Worku, the Coordinator of the Initiative’s Technical Committee.

Adefres underscored that the program has already mapped 504,000 hectares of land out of the 1.8 million hectares where soil and water conservation efforts have been undertaken to prepare the sites for planting.

This massive reforestation effort is part of Ethiopia’s broader strategy to address deforestation and ensure food security.

Furthermore, the government has submitted a request to the Guinness Book of World Records to recognize the initiative’s ambitious goal of mass tree planting, where millions of Ethiopians are expected to participate.

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