Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai on Wednesday launched a campaign aimed at curbing global warming and related environmental damage by planting 1 billion trees annually.

The Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign, coordinated by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), was launched at the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in a bid to encourage all sectors of society, from concerned citizens to corporations, to take small but practical steps to combat what is probably the key challenge of the 21st century.

"Action does not need to be confined to the corridors of the negotiation halls," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, noting that intergovernmental talks on tackling climate change can often be difficult, protracted and sometimes frustrating, especially for those looking on.

"But we cannot and must not lose heart. The campaign, which aims to plant a minimum of 1 billion trees in 2007, offers a direct and straight-forward path down which all sectors of society can step to contribute to meet the climate change challenge," he said.

Rehabilitating tens of millions of hectares of degraded land and reforesting the Earth are necessary to restore the productivity of soil and water resources, and expanding tree cover will mitigate the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a global warming greenhouse gas.

To make up for the loss of trees in the past decade, 130 million hectares, or 1.3 million square km, an area as large as Peru, would have to be reforested, amounting to planting some 14 billion trees every year for 10 consecutive years.

"The Billion Tree Campaign can be practically and symbolically a significant expression of our common determination to make a difference in developing and developed countries alike," Steiner said. "We have but a short time to avert serious climate change. We need action."

"We need to plant trees alongside other concrete community-minded actions and in doing so send a signal to the corridors of political power across the globe that the watching and waiting is over - that countering climate change can take root via one billion small but significant acts in our gardens, parks, countryside and rural areas," he added.

For Maathai, the first African woman honored by the Nobel committee said, "We want to commit ourselves to action and we want to call the whole world to participate in this action."

She noted that trees provide natural protection against the effects of climate change and called on people everywhere to get their hands dirty while diplomats haggle over treaties.

"This is something that anybody can do. Anybody can dig a hole, anybody can put a tree in the hole and water it and everybody must make sure that the tree they plant survives," she said.

Maathai won the 2004 Nobel peace prize for her work with the Green Belt Movement she founded to promote sustainable development by planting trees first in Kenya, then throughout Africa and the world:

The idea for the campaign was inspired by the prize winner. When a corporate group in the United States told her it was planning to plant a million trees, Maathai replied: "That's great, but what we really need is to plant a billion trees."

The campaign is open to all -- individuals, children and youth groups, schools, community groups, non-governmental organizations, farmers, private sector organizations, local authorities, and national governments. Each pledge can be anything from a single tree to 10 million trees.

The campaign identifies four key areas for planting: degraded natural forests and wilderness areas, farms and rural landscapes, sustainably managed plantations and urban environments, but it can also begin with a single tree in a back garden.

Source:Xinhua