Doing your bit: Of parks, trees and more trees

South Sudanese refugee, Bidal Abraham uses his time in Uganda to promote a movement to conserve the environment. At 32-years-old he has already been forced to flee his home in South Sudan three times. Each time he made it safely to neighbouring Uganda but noticed a problem: there were always fewer trees.

People have to live with leaves falling from their neighbor's trees, a German court has ruled. But tree owners do have to stick to some regulations.

Elizabeth Wathuti, the 23-year-old climate activist planting trees in Kenya

Cameroon is losing forest at a dramatic pace – with ebony trees fast disappearing. Now a Cameroon sawmill has partnered with US instrument maker Taylor Guitars, which favors the high-quality wood, to replant ebony trees.

Unknown perpetrators made off with 80 Christmas trees being stored in an empty department store over the weekend. Police estimate that the trees were worth over €1,000.

For most outsiders, Los Angeles is all about Hollywood, palm trees and sunny skies. But the huge metropolis that is home to nearly four million people is also the largest urban oil field in the country. Hundreds of active oil wells sit in densely populated and mostly low-income neighbourhoods of the county, butting up against schools, homes, parks, shopping malls or cemeteries.

In Bandia, there used to be a forest of baobab trees, but all that remains is a lunar landscape of abandoned craters. In Senegal, Plans to extend a cement plant that has been exploiting the subsoil for 20 years are causing local populations to fear even greater desolation.

Volunteers from Berlin are helping the city's drought-stricken trees by arranging to water them regularly. Lukas Jülich and Sebastian Haße roam the German capital's streets armed with watering cans to take care of the trees, which since 2018 have been under threat from a lack of rainfall.

The 18th edition of Dakar Fashion Week hosts its main catwalk in a baobab forest in Senegal to maintain some social distancing. "With Covid, we had to be creative, I had to find solutions and above all we had to avoid cancelling the show, and here I think there is enough space so that no one feels cramped," says Adama Ndiaye, producer at Dakar Fashion Week.

Over the next five years, 26-year-old Delband Rawanduzi and her volunteers aim to plant one million oaks to repopulate forests in Iraqi Kurdistan depleted by war, illegal logging and fires. The resilient trees can endure both the cold of northern Iraq and the dry spells of one of the world's hottest countries.

Eighty-eight-year-old Mayan grandmother Dona Menchita showed off her skills and energy proper of a youngster climbing up trees and picking up fruits to sell in Tizimin, Yucatan, Mexico. This fearless grandmother's age doesn't stop her from work, as she continues cutting firewood, taking care of her crops and also climbing up the trees.

As the number of shea trees in West and East Africa rapidly declines, one group is trying to preserve shea parklands for generations to come.