An the beginning was Ethiopia. This is how Anna Prodromou tells it when she reports on the year 2019, on the news that was circulating on the internet at the time. It was said that 23 million volunteers planted more than 350 million trees in a single day in the East African country as part of a government reforestation campaign. The numbers were later questioned, but that’s not the point. It is important that the reports from Africa made the rounds in Cyprus and impressed many people. “On the island, this news was heavily debated. This gave rise to the idea of launching an initiative to plant trees on a massive scale in Cyprus as well.”
The reaction was overwhelming, reports Prodromou. More than eighty interested people came to a first meeting in Nicosia. Thus was born the “300,000 Trees for Nicosia” initiative – one for every inhabitant of the capital. Many of the volunteers take part because they personally want to do something about the climate crisis. It has long since arrived in Cyprus. “The Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East are getting hotter and drier, and at a faster rate than the global average,” says Anna Prodromou and reports on the well-known scientific findings: Rain has become rarer, especially in summer, and if it does fall, then sometimes as heavy rain that the ground cannot absorb.
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