Next Media and Tree Adoption Uganda have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at creating awareness about climate action through the massive tree planting initiative.
The United Nations decade on Ecosystem Restoration encourages collaboration among governments, organizations and communities to scale up efforts to restore ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, mangroves, and agricultural lands.
It is against that background that the Tree Adoption Uganda and Next Media have collaborated to drive the tree planting narrative as part of climate action work.
Dr Charles Batte, executive director of Tree Adoption Uganda, says the initiative will leverage on the technology to monitor every tree planted through the tree planting digital application innovation to track green cover and assess the progress of the campaign.
"Tree adoption Uganda's app will be used to track each and every tree that will be planted, once you register, take a picture of the tree and select what specie of the tree it is and the app will generate the rest of the data including the GPS coordinates of where that tree has been planted including the date that tree has been planted among other data points," Batte said.
Joe Kigozi, Next Media Group deputy chief executive officer (CEO), asserts that the partnership will see next media serve as an education platform for environment through published data and in-turn sensitise masses about the value of environmental conservation.
"Working with Tree Adoption Uganda is simply to say that they have a lot of data which needs to be publicized but also we need to be able to create awareness which is one of the most important things," he said.
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"But we must start the journey of planting trees so that our environment is saved, we are able to have economic value of the country, we are able to avert these natural disasters that are happening today like floods, the effects of lack of action in agriculture, polyethene bags and all that."
Kigozi added that it is very important for Ugandans to take action as individuals, as families and organizations to mitigate the effects of the changing patterns of climate through initiatives like tree planting.
The collaboration aligns with Next Media's campaign to plant 15 million trees to restore ecosystems, enhance biodiversity and promote sustainable development.
