The city planting a million trees in two years | Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr

Transcriber: TED Translators Admin Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs

It was December 2015,

a month since the end of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone,

and I was driving along the Grafton Road

on the outskirts of our capital city, Freetown.

I'd driven along that road so many times over the past 18 months,

but honestly, I'd been so preoccupied, I didn't notice my surroundings.

But that afternoon,

I wasn't distracted, and I took it all in.

I was shocked.

So much of the once-lush green forest cover

had simply disappeared.

I felt physically sick as I parked my car and looked at the barren hills around me.

I wasn't just witnessing and mourning the loss of beauty,

crushing though that was.

I was witnessing and mourning the very real impact of climate change,

which is felt in ways both large and small in my city,

my country

and on my continent.

Sierra Leone now regularly experiences extreme weather patterns,

particularly abnormally heavy rainfall or delayed rains,

both of which can lead to crop failures

and in turn fuel the migration of people from rural areas to cities.

In Freetown, a city of 1.2 million people,

the pressure for housing and the absence of development control

has led to the establishment of over 70 informal settlements

in the past 20 years.

This, combined with the sale of forested land to house builders,

has resulted in the deforestation

which came into such sharp focus for me that afternoon.

Less than two years later, in August 2017,

a massive landslide near that area led to the loss of about 1,000 lives

in less than five minutes.

This is not an abstract crisis.

The loss of our forests is not just about the loss of some shade.

It's about the loss of our ability to live.

Wanting to do something about this was one of the factors

that led to my decision to run for mayor of Freetown,

a position I've held since 2018.

And one of my favorite initiatives

is to make Freetown a tree town once again.

Our goal:

to increase vegetation cover by 50 percent in Freetown

by the end of my term in 2022.

That means we will plant a million trees within the next two years.

And we start by planting the first 500,000 seedlings

this rainy season.

For this to work, we need to involve everyone.

We need to make our city collectively proud of what we can do together

to protect ourselves

and our homes.

For nearly a year now,

15 different species of trees have been nursed on 11 sites

across the city.

And now each tree will be planted in a home, a school,

an office, a public space, on a hillside or in a mangrove

by a tree steward.

Anyone in Freetown can opt to be a tree steward.

And the growth of the trees

will be tracked by our community-based growing teams

using our custom-made Treetracker app.

This isn't just about planting trees,

it's about growing trees,

and it's about ensuring that each one of us

is part of the process.

A million trees will not fix climate change.

But they will reduce the risk of landslides and flooding,

and they will reintroduce biodiversity --

I've already seen the butterflies back in the park.

And they will protect our water catchments.

A million trees is our city's small contribution

to increasing the much-needed global carbon sink.

Perhaps you should plant some trees, too.

Thank you.