Environment
What survives the second season
Billions of seedlings have been planted under the Green Legacy Initiative. The number that matters is how many are still standing three years later.
8 min readDawit Mengistu
Planting is the photogenic part of restoration. Survival is the part that decides whether a hillside holds its soil through the next heavy rains.
Ethiopia's national planting campaigns have mobilised participation at a scale few countries could organise. The open question — asked as often inside the programme as outside it — is what proportion of those seedlings reach canopy.
The metric that counts
- Survival rate verified by sampling three seasons after planting
- Canopy cover change measured from satellite imagery
- Species mix matched to the site rather than to nursery convenience
- Community tenure over the restored land
A seedling counted is not a forest. A canopy measured is.
Restoration monitoring principle
Where area exclosures have been sustained — hillsides closed to grazing and managed by the households that depend on them — springs have returned and gully erosion has slowed measurably. That is the model worth scaling, and it is slower than a planting day.
