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.