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Good practice Imported

Yashil Makon - Uzbekistan's Billion-Tree Pledge, Its Reporting-Fraud Scandal, and the UNDP-Backed Correction

Uzbekistan · Tashkent · See the Uzbekistan profile · See the Tashkent profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 96% 20/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Uzbekistan's 2021 pledge to plant 1 billion trees was followed in 2022 by reports that 6.2M 'planted' trees were never registered and 2.4M seedlings died from neglect; UNDP then co-developed a digitised master plan now tracking hundreds of millions of trees.

6.2 million
Unregistered 'planted' trees found (2022)
2.4 million
Seedlings that died from neglect (2022)
>250 million
Trees recorded in digitised registry (January 2024)
Yashil Makon - Uzbekistan's Billion-Tree Pledge, Its Reporting-Fraud Scandal, and the UNDP-Backed Correction

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change of Uzbekistan / UNDP
Period
2021-2024
Keywords
national afforestation, urban greening, forest-carbon governance, digital monitoring

Context

In November 2021 Uzbekistan launched 'Yashil Makon', pledging 1 billion trees over five years and raising tree cover from 8% to 30%.

Results

Daryo.uz investigative reporting (Oct 2022) found 6.2 million 'planted' trees were never registered, 2.4 million seedlings died from neglect, and 341,000 were planted on unsuitable land.

Conclusions

The Ministry of Ecology partnered with UNDP on a 2023 feasibility study/master plan accounting for survival rates and site-selection standards, and a digitisation effort held records for over 250 million individual trees by January 2024.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Very high (> €5M)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change, UNDP technical team

Conditions for success

  • survival-rate accounting and site-selection standards in the master plan
  • verifying planting claims via the digitised registry rather than self-reported totals

Common failure modes

  • original planting claims significantly overstated and poorly executed

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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