Niku Argane’s farm sits on a steep hillside in central Ethiopia’s semi-mountainous Gurage Zone, a landscape where years of relentless flooding have carved deep, jagged gullies through the earth. The soil that once produced abundant harvests of barley and potatoes—enough to feed his wife and four children while leaving a comfortable surplus to sell at the local market—has steadily washed away. At the same time, worsening droughts have made the remaining dirt harder to cultivate, threatening the family’s primary source of sustenance and income.
“We have never stopped farming, but our production declined because of land degradation,” the 32-year-old farmer said from his land in Ambele Kebele.
Over the course of the last century, Ethiopia nearly eradicated its native forests as trees were systematically cleared to make way for expanding agriculture, livestock grazing, and firewood collection. The widespread loss of vital tree cover and intricate root systems left the earth defenseless against wind and heavy rains, which quickly washed away fertile topsoil and drove a sharp decline in overall crop yields.
Today, that underlying vulnerability is being severely compounded by the escalating pressures of climate change. Ethiopia is widely recognized as one of the countries most vulnerable to global climate shifts. Heavier, more erratic downpours are sluicing away depleted soils and triggering devastating landslides, while more intense dry spells, combined with the permanent loss of the shade trees once provided, rapidly bake and dry out the land.
The economic and human toll of this environmental crisis is staggering. Land degradation costs the East African nation an estimated $4.3 billion every year through diminished harvests and lost income for smallholder farmers, translating directly into a severe shortage of food availability. With more than 100 million Ethiopians relying entirely on agriculture for their livelihoods, the consequences reach far beyond the natural environment. Climate shocks and chronic crop losses have emerged as some of the primary drivers of acute hunger across the nation. In 2024 alone, an estimated 15.8 million Ethiopians—roughly 12 percent of the total population—required emergency food assistance.
Now, the country is undertaking an unprecedented national effort to reverse this alarming trajectory. Argane has personally planted 80 tree seedlings on his own farmland and an additional 50 in a shared communal area, contributing his small share to a vastly larger, nationwide undertaking. Over just the last seven years, tens of millions of Ethiopian citizens have mobilized to plant more than 47 billion seedlings across the country, creating one of the largest and most ambitious environmental restoration campaigns in modern history.
Operating under the banner of a government-backed program that aims to plant a staggering 50 billion seedlings by the year 2030, volunteers are working to rebuild native forests and thoughtfully integrate trees back into active farmland. In doing so, they are actively working to sequester atmospheric carbon while attempting to insulate future generations from the growing severity of extreme weather events.
While massive reforestation initiatives frequently fall short of their lofty goals around the globe, many observers note that Ethiopians are drawing profound hope from the sheer scale and ambition of their undertaking.
“Reforestation is one of the most difficult things you can imagine,” said Aad Kessler, a researcher based at the Netherlands’ Wageningen University. “It almost always fails, but this is so big that even if 30 percent of the trees survive, it’s still huge.”
Historical records show that during the early 20th century, dense forests covered an estimated 35 to 40 percent of Ethiopia. Its highland regions were exceptionally green, with thick woodlands stretching across much of the nation’s cool, fertile uplands. However, as human populations expanded and rural settlements multiplied, trees were cut down for agriculture, animal pasture, domestic fuel, and construction materials.
As the soils steadily lost their natural fertility, cultivation was forced onto increasingly marginal lands, including steep slopes. Tillage combined with the total loss of protective vegetation accelerated the erosion of fertile topsoil, which washed away into swelling rivers and vital reservoirs. By 1989, national forest cover had plummeted to an estimated level of less than 3 percent, while Ethiopia’s highlands were losing an astonishing 1 billion metric tons of topsoil every single year.
In the wake of the devastating droughts and famines that struck the country during the 1970s and 1980s, the Ethiopian government and international donor organizations began investing heavily in foundational soil and water conservation projects. These early measures included restricting livestock from grazing on exhausted lands, planting trees across vulnerable tracts, and constructing physical barriers such as stone terraces and check dams—small, low walls built from rocks and logs placed directly across gullies to slow the destructive rush of rainwater. By the turn of the 21st century, these restoration programs were being implemented at an increasingly broad scale.
The government dramatically supercharged these efforts in 2019 by formalizing tree-planting into a synchronized nationwide campaign known as the Green Legacy Initiative. This sweeping scheme successfully mobilized millions of individuals and civic groups, including smallholder farmers, public servants, schools, and religious organizations, while distributing free seedlings to communities in every corner of the country.
In 2024, the federal government reinforced its commitment by establishing the Green Legacy and Landscape Restoration Special Fund, dedicating between 0.5 percent and 1 percent of the annual federal budget—roughly $73 million to $145 million—to ongoing landscape restoration work. For a low-income nation, this represented an unusually large financial commitment. Development experts note that the program’s exceptional ambition and tangible success played a major role in selecting Ethiopia to host the upcoming United Nations climate conference, offering a prestigious international platform to showcase its domestic greening efforts.
The momentum of the initiative was on full display in August, when 26.6 million Ethiopian citizens planted 800 million tree seedlings in a single day, according to official government figures. That massive turnout surpassed the previous year’s impressive tally of 714.7 million.
Among the dedicated volunteers was Yeshihareg Teferi, who traveled well before sunrise from her home in Addis Ababa out to Tulu Dimtu, spending hours hunched in the cold rain to dig holes in the thick mud. It marked Teferi’s fifth consecutive year participating in the annual planting event. While she had previously planted indigenous tree species such as the African wild olive and the African fern pine, this time she deliberately chose juniper.
“We have a responsibility to ensure future generations inherit a green and fertile environment, rather than barren land,” she said.
There are already visible signs that the widespread labor is having a measurable impact on the ground. Official government reports indicate that national forest cover rose from 17.2 percent in 2019 to 23.6 percent in 2023. Furthermore, scientific studies of previously restored ecosystems have documented substantial reductions in localized soil erosion. Between 2013 and 2023, the country’s annual deforestation rate dropped significantly, falling from more than 350 square miles down to approximately 100 square miles.
These large-scale interventions have also provided unexpected benefits for native wildlife populations. In Abijata-Shalla National Park, located within the Ethiopian highlands, conservation workers replanted heavily degraded land, constructed stone terraces, and dug contour bunds—small earthen ridges running horizontally across hillsides designed to slow water runoff and allow critical moisture to soak deep into the soil.
As native trees and grasses gradually returned, increased groundwater infiltration caused water levels in the park’s central lakes to rise, according to Kumera Wakjira, director-general of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority. The returning water spurred an immediate resurgence of fish populations, which in turn drew back fish-eating birds such as cormorants and African darters. At the same time, populations of Grant’s gazelles and wild dogs have begun expanding back into habitats where they were previously scarce, Wakjira noted.
Despite these notable successes, experts caution that planted trees do not come with an absolute guarantee of survival. A prominent 2022 study examining 176 reforestation projects across Asia found that roughly half of all planted trees failed to survive past their first five years.
Furthermore, simply planting trees does not automatically recreate a functioning forest ecosystem, explained Endalkachew Wolde-Meskel, a soil scientist and senior researcher at the Center for International Forestry Research. True ecological recovery typically requires the natural regeneration of understory grasses and diverse vegetation, supported by ongoing soil and water conservation practices and active management by local communities.
“The objective is not really ‘plant trees,’” Wolde-Meskel said. “It is to restore the functioning of the entire landscape.”
Emiru Birhane Hizikias, an Ethiopian restoration ecologist working at Norway’s Nord University, described it as a “blessing, politically speaking,” to have the nation’s prime minister directly championing tree planting. However, he cautioned that the sheer speed and scale of the Green Legacy Initiative have occasionally outpaced the practical systems needed to ensure effective management on the ground. Too frequently, he argued, the primary focus remains on pushing massive numbers of seedlings into the earth rather than guaranteeing their long-term survival. Just as a human baby cannot be expected to grow without attentive care, he noted, similar care is required for successful forestry.
Conversely, Abreham Berta Aneseyee, an environmental scientist at Ethiopia’s Wolkite University and an adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture, strongly disputed that characterization. He emphasized that the massive planting campaigns are consistently accompanied by practical, hands-on guidance from government forestry and agricultural experts. These specialists travel directly from farm to farm, advising smallholders on proper planting techniques for various types of seedlings—including how deeply to place them in the earth and how to construct protective structures like soil bunds. They also educate farmers on sustainable forest management and the importance of protecting mature trees rather than cutting them down.
A recent 2026 study analyzing more than 44,500 seedlings planted in southern Ethiopia under the Green Legacy Initiative in 2023 found an encouraging survival rate of about 80 percent. Survival rates were significantly higher among older seedlings, those planted during the height of the wet season, and specimens whose planters had received formal training in best plantation practices. In districts such as Humbo and Boloso Sore within Ethiopia’s southwestern Wolaita Zone, the Green Legacy Initiative has been successfully layered onto long-running community land management efforts, with residents building check dams to stabilize eroding gullies, digging half-moon ditches to trap scarce water, and interspersing trees with native grasses and shrubs.
Independent researchers note that Ethiopia’s current approach has few direct parallels anywhere else in Africa, particularly regarding its combination of high-level political leadership, domestic financial backing, widespread public mobilization, and sheer geographic scale. Aad Kessler of Wageningen University compared the national effort to China’s historic restoration of the Loess Plateau, widely regarded as one of the most severely eroded regions on Earth.
During the 1990s, China initiated massive watershed rehabilitation projects on the plateau, followed in 1999 by the implementation of the Grain for Green program, which provided financial incentives for farmers to halt crop cultivation on vulnerable slopes and plant protective trees, shrubs, and grasses. By 2016, more than 11,500 square miles of rain-fed cropland had been successfully converted into dense forests or grasslands, driving a dramatic 25 percent increase in regional vegetative cover over the course of a single decade.
However, researchers point out important limits to the comparison. China’s program largely relied on paying farmers to take degraded slopes completely out of agricultural production, whereas millions of smallholder Ethiopian farmers continue to depend directly on their small plots of land for immediate food security and daily livelihoods. Nonetheless, Kessler noted that both massive undertakings share a fundamental, overarching philosophy: “Do it massively, and then see where you end up.”
Kessler’s own academic work, which includes a government-backed field project within Ethiopia, advocates for a more decentralized and participatory approach—one that directly engages local farmers and rural communities in collaborative decisions regarding what specific areas to restore and the best methods to employ.
“Of course it is better [than top-down action],” he said, “but it takes more time.”
Even as Ethiopia pours immense resources into rebuilding its degraded forests and depleted soils, the accelerating reality of climate change continues to alter the environmental conditions these landscapes must withstand. In the arid pastoral regions of Afar and Somali, the Green Legacy Initiative has intentionally shifted its focus toward drought-tolerant plant species, though substantial uncertainty remains over whether the trees taking root today will be capable of surviving the harsher climate extremes projected for decades ahead.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects increasingly frequent and intense rainfall events across East Africa as global temperatures continue to rise. In July 2024, exceptionally heavy downpours in Ethiopia’s southern Geze Gofa district triggered massive landslides that resulted in the deaths of at least 257 people. Recent scientific studies also indicate that climate change is driving more frequent and severe El Niño cycles across the globe, bringing profound consequences for East Africa’s weather patterns. Earlier this year, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network formally linked El Niño conditions to historically poor summer rains in several parts of Ethiopia, leaving certain agricultural areas facing their driest June and July on record.
For many farmers, these shifting climatic patterns have already complicated the foundational requirement of land restoration: ensuring that newly planted seedlings manage to survive their very first growing season.
Belayneh Mamo, a 65-year-old farmer living in Ethiopia’s northern and drought-prone Amhara region, traditionally relies on predictable July rainfall to nurture his crops of teff, sorghum, maize, and wheat. While he regularly receives government-provided coffee, neem, and gesho seeds, erratic weather prevented him from planting any crops until August, when the season’s delayed rains finally arrived.
“In previous years, September was a period when crops were already developing and food such as bulgur and maize were becoming available for consumption,” he said. “The delays affected the seedlings we plant, our crops, and the availability of animal feed.”
Back on Niku Argane’s hillside farm in the Gurage Zone, however, tangible signs of ecological restoration are already apparent. Since 2019, he has carefully planted grass, nutritional fodder, fenugreek, and various fruit trees along the outer boundaries of his fields. These additions have successfully anchored the vulnerable soil while providing essential feed for his four cows, six goats, and three sheep. Meanwhile, his barley harvest has risen from roughly 1,800 pounds per acre to approximately 3,200 pounds, while the newly established vegetation has visibly reduced soil erosion and slowed the destructive velocity of water rushing across his land during heavy rainstorms.
“Restoring degraded land isn’t just about protecting the environment,” Argane said. “It’s also about making life better for my family and community.”