A recent Facebook post claiming that the Philippines broke the world record by planting more than three million trees in an hour is false. The misinformation was referring to a tree planting activity held in Mindanao in 2014.
Amazing Facts, a Facebook page that describes itself as a science website, posted on 22 August 2023 the following item: “The Philippines Breaks World Record By Planting More Than 3 Million Trees In An Hour.”
The post, which did not present additional details, had generated at least 280,000 likes, 3,300 comments, and 20,000 shares as of 30 August. It also did not say when the activity took place.
Amazing Facts, which has 608,000 followers, was obviously referring to the record set by the Philippines on 26 September 2014.
On that day, 122,168 participants in 29 different areas all over Mindanao planted trees under the activity dubbed “TreeVolution: Greening MindaNOW,” led by the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA).
“This record-breaking event saw the planting of rubber, cacao, coffee, timber and mahogany trees, as well as a range of fruit trees and other species indigenous to the Philippines,” according to the same report by philstar.com, citing the Guinness World Records.
It is true that the Philippines had broken the world record for the most number of trees simultaneously planted in an hour in multiple locations. However, the verified number of trees planted was only 2,294,629, according to the Guinness World Records, as cited by then MinDA Chair Luwalhati Antonino in a statement posted on the agency’s website.
Philippine officials placed the number of trees planted at 3,373,762.
MinDA initially claimed that a total of four million trees were planted, but acknowledged the official figure of 2,294,629 trees set by the Guinness World Records based on its stringent verification process.
“Due to the stringent verification process of the Guinness committee, only 2,294,629 out of the four million trees planted were officially tallied, exceeding the previous record of India by more than 300,000 trees,” Antonino said in the same statement.
“More importantly, this official number from Guinness does not in any way reduce the long-term impacts of the actual four million trees planted in over 7,800 hectares of land all over Mindanao,” she added.
The activity, which aimed to restore denuded parts of the remaining forests in Mindanao, surpassed the record set by India in 2011, when it planted over 1.9 million trees in an hour.
“Dubbed “TreeVolution: Greening MindaNOW,” the Guinness world record attempt will combine the efforts of DENR’s NGP and MinDA’s MindaNOW! Nurturing Our Waters Program, which aim to plant trees in 690,815 hectares and reach at least 30 percent forest cover as envisioned in the Mindanao 2020 Peace and Development Framework Plan or Mindanao 2020,” MinDA said on 4 August 2014.
The NGP (National Greening Program), which was led by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and implemented during the administration of the late President Benigno S. Aquino III, aims to plant “some 1.5 billion trees covering about 1.5 million hectares for a period of six years from 2011 to 2016” in lands of the public domain, including forestlands, mangrove forests, and ancestral domains.
As with all our other reports, MindaNews welcomes leads or suggestions from the public to potential fact-check stories. (H. Marcos C. Mordeno / MindaNews)
