The One Billion-Tree Campaign

Desertification has become one of the most harmful aspects of environmental degradation known in the world. It has devastating impacts on all aspects of life, including food security, preservation of lakes and rivers, cropping land, and climate. It threatens to create social unrest and conflict, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa, where by 2020, it is predicted to displace an estimated 135 million people from their lands.

The major cause of desertification stems from the destruction of forests, or deforestation. In Burkina Faso, most of its forests have been diminished by human encroachment, including dated mining techniques, slash-and-burn agriculture, and the heavy reliance on tree-cutting for fuel wood to sustain a rapidly growing population. As a result, there have been issues of soil degradation, which combined with the deforestation and recent droughts, has had severe effects on Burkina Faso's main source of business, agriculture.

Burkina Faso strongly supports the One Billion-Tree Campaign. There have been questions to the influence planting a billion trees could have on the environment. Some doubt that the trees can absorb enough CO2 to mitigate global warming. However, while there is no concrete evidence to conclude this argument, Burkina Faso realizes that the campaign also serves as a means of reforestation, awareness, and global unity.

The One Billion-Tree Campaign has surpassed one billion pledges, confirming the general support the program has received. It avoids intergovernmental talks, and instead, offers a more direct and straightforward path towards mitigating deforestation. The campaign is especially revolutionary in the fact that it allows any person from any sector of society to contribute; it is a completely voluntary program.

While there have been remarkable results from UNEP's One Billion-Tree Campaign, there is one problem in its core principle, namely, the availability of the program on a global standpoint. The entire program is web-based, meaning that in order for a person to gain information, pledge, or obtain trees, they would have to have access to a computer. While this might be an easy task for developed countries, most citizens in developing countries do not have this luxury. Therefore, it is literally impossible for most people in Burkina Faso to participate in the program. Of the 1,200,000,000 trees pledged, only 44,250 are to be pledged in Burkina Faso. All of these pledges come from individual people or NGOs. Not only are the general public excluded