United Nations Radio

The billion tree campaign is setting a goal of planting 7 billion trees by the 2009 meeting on climate change in Copenhagen, just over one for each person on our planet.

The original campaign, launched at the UN Climate Change meeting in Nairobi in November 2006, catalysed the planting of 2 billion trees in just 18 months, double its original target. Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Programme, the UN agency spearheading the campaign with the World Agroforestry Centre, says the idea is to both empower people and take climate change from the abstract to something concrete:

"It's an ambitious target but it's also a very practical expression of this idea that people can do something about climate change and they can also send a very powerful message. It's not a given that we will reach this target but we believe that we have so much support now, from governments, from individuals, from the corporate sector, that it is a target that is achievable."

The initiative which is under the patronage of Nobel peace prize laureate Wangari Maathai and Prince Albert of Monaco has become a practical expression of private and public concern over global warming. Trees and forests play a vital role in regulating the climate since they absorb carbon dioxide and slow down global climate change.

Diane Bailey, United Nations Radio.

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