The theme this year is “Trees for the Earth”

Earth Day was first celebrated in the United States in 1970 and is organised by the Earth Day Network.  Its mission is to broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide and to mobilize it as the most effective vehicle to build a healthy, sustainable environment, address climate change, and protect the Earth for future generations.

This year, Earth Day coincides with the signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which will take place at UN Headquarters in New York. The Agreement was adopted by all 196 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at COP21 in Paris on 12 December 2015. In the agreement, all countries agreed to work to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and given the grave risks, to strive for 1.5 degrees Celsius.

With this year’s theme, and looking forward to its 50th anniversary, it sets the goal of planting 7.8 billion trees over the next five years.

We thought it would be a nice opportunity to share with you one of our Forest Landscape Restoration case study entitled: “Planting trees to strengthen the resilience of Rwandan communities”.

Happy Earth Day and hope you enjoy reading this inspiring story.

Planting trees to strengthen the resilience of Rwandan communities
The small Gishwati Forest Reserve is located in Northwestern Rwanda. The forest reserve was virtually intact in the early 1980s but was cleared for intensive livestock production and replanted with Mexican weeping pine at the expense of native species. In recent decades, unsuitable land use policies combined with an immense influx of refugees lead to massive deforestation of the area.  Read more…