Merat Alem

Ethiopian environmentalist leading Africa's largest tree-planting initiative

Dr. Merat Alem (b.1978) is an environmental scientist and activist from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 2005, she pioneered the Green Horizon Project, a grassroots movement that has planted over 50 million trees across Ethiopia's drought-prone regions. Her innovative agroforestry techniques combine traditional knowledge with modern climate science to restore degraded lands while creating sustainable livelihoods for rural communities.

Merat's Community Forest Guardians program trains local women as ecosystem managers, resulting in 30% higher tree survival rates compared to government projects. She co-founded the African Green Alliance in 2015 to share Ethiopia's reforestation strategies across 15 countries. Her TED Talk 'Growing Forests, Not Hunger' has over 2 million views. In 2021, the UN Environment Programme named her 'African Environmentalist of the Decade'.