Transcriber: Translate TED
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.