Chuwa’s massive environmental education programme has encouraged Tanzanians, including thousands of schoolchildren, to plant tree seedlings to restore the nation’s dwindling forests. The total of young trees planted over the 15 years that he has led this work has reached 1,445,000, with the 1.5 million figure expected early in 2009.
In Tanzania, one of the world’s poorest countries, people are often tempted to cut down valuable, indigenous trees like the mpingo. Despite this, thanks largely to the replanting programme, “there is more forest than there was five or 10 years ago”, Chuwa says. While his campaign needs many years of further planting and environmental education to succeed fully, the 54-year-old Laureate says “the sight of trees growing since I planted them when I was young gives me hope”.
Over the past two years, the African Blackwood Conservation Project (ABCP), set up to support Chuwa’s project, has gained funding from the UK-based Good Gifts Catalog, which enables individuals and organizations to make gifts to environmental and humanitarian programmes around the world. Thanks to this funding, mpingo trees are being replanted at locations in northern Tanzania: at Makayuni, two full-time workers are now employed by ABCP to plant trees, while a school in Kilindini has agreed to plant 5,000 mpingo trees. Thousands of seedlings are being planted at other locations, bringing the 1.5 million mark steadily closer.
A key element of the ABCP programme is ensuring that seedlings receive plenty of attention in the first few years of growth to ensure their survival.
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