We need to plant trees to bring hope to this world.

Trees use carbon dioxide to manufacture food, so they need the gas that contributes to global warming. In consuming CO2 trees release O2 to clean our environment.

So why don’t we plant as many trees as we can to protect our environment. Know that planting one tree is equivalent to recruiting one soldier for your security and cutting one tree means losing one soldier in a battle which in turn means one enemy step taken towards you. Let us not help the enemy advance towards us by destroying the trees. Let us stop it by planting trees.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, a conference has started today to discuss about the global climate changes. There is a hope that a positive agreement shall be reached in which all sides involved will be committed to implement.

But alongside these high level efforts of reducing emissions into the air, there is a need to look into the matter on community, or personal basis to be able to change our life right from the base and in a way quite consistent and more reinforcing to the decisions being taken at global level.

It is quite unfortunate that no Head of State or UN big bosses have so far committed any change in their personal lives to set an example to the rest of the world. Reducing the their daily consumption or cutting the energy use of their palaces by 0.1% would set the mind of the people to follow suit and that would no doubt make a difference.

But that did not happen so far. As civil society around the world let us take the initiative and become the leading body that has stepped up changing the world positively. Therefore I suggest all civil society organizations worldwide to commit a tree planting campaign somewhere in their surroundings and spread the message until almost everyone has planted one.

The world is now staggering with the weight of more than six billion people. Imagine if 10% of the world population which is roughly 600 million people, plant trees. If we add that number of trees to what we already have, it will be very difficult for carbon dioxide to disturb us anymore in this world as each tree would need millions of parts of carbon dioxide to make food. Would that not be astonishingly a great achievement?

In history the color green has been in the limelight to reflect a positive outcome of certain engagement such as the Chinese Green Revolution initiated or the green books of Qadafi´s Libya and more recently the Green peace movements and parties advocating peace through preservation of environment.

But here I would add one more item into the long list of greens: The Green Hope which means offering hope to another person in another part of the world by planting a tree in your area. In doing so people around the world will be connected through a common environment cause by sharing a common feeling regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds. Since the whole world is considered to be one village and since that village is deep trouble due to climatical changes, the only thing we can make this village a safer place for our children is to offer hope to each other so as to generate hope from each other. The tree is the symbolic way of expressing that gesture. I have already planted a tree for you please dear reader, plant one for a borther or a sister in another world.
Thanks
Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Writer and Film-maker
Växjö University
Sweden.