14 DAY TRIAL // Macedonia set an example for the Western world on Wednesday, when thousands of its citizens joined a massive reforestation campaign throughout the country. The small nation, located in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, currently has some 2 million inhabitants. However, it managed to plant over 6 million seedlings in just one day.
People were transported via bus to designated locations. Some came with their children, and everyone joined in. After Australia's recent march on climate change, the Macedonian action is one of the most direct, towards stopping global warming. Boris Trajanov, the opera singer who initiated the campaign, says that he plans to extend this type of action to neighboring countries as well.
"If Macedonia, a country of two million people, can plant six million trees, we can only imagine how many trees can be planted in other, bigger countries," the singer told Reuters. He also announced plans to extend the campaign to other Balkan countries, such as Serbia, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Albania. "Our goal is to make Macedonia "greener" and make people more aware of the needs of this planet," he added.
Even the army joined in, dispatching some 1,000 soldiers to 14 sites throughout the country. The servicemen planted well over 200,000 trees and said that they would gladly partake in other similar actions in the future.
One of the people attending the campaign with her two children said "Just as we take care of our homes, we should take care of our planet. We have no other place to live, that's why I'm going."
Such direct action benefits the environment in Macedonia to a great extent, seeing how the past two summers saw widely-spread wildfires, which wrecked havoc in the forests of the nation. The current campaign represents people's way of letting the government know they still care about their environment.