How to Plant a Billion Trees

And now for something a little different… trees!

Trees offer countless benefits. They provide oxygen and nourishment, conserve water, reduce air and water pollution, harbor countless animal species, prevent soil erosion, are a renewable source of energy… the list goes on and on.

For the real estate aficionados out there, it has been shown that neighborhoods with abundant trees are generally more valuable and safer. Planted in the right location, trees can also help conserve energy around the house, cool the streets and provide refuge from damaging solar radiation.

In other words, trees are critical to our quality of life, both in rural and urban communities. And looking at it from an investment perspective, according to GMO LLC, a US$120 billion US investment firm, timber is expected to be the best performing asset class over the next seven years, easily outranking US, international and emerging markets stocks and bonds.

And yet, deforestation continues at a galloping pace around the world – 36 football fields every minute, according to the WWF. We may like our steaks and cheap IKEA furniture, but with the global stock of trees in rapid decline the fact is that we and future generations are becoming much poorer as a result: loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation, disrupted weather patterns and so on. It takes many years to grow a healthy tree or restore a damaged ecosystem.

The good news is that it is still relatively easy to make a difference. If we can’t slow down the cutting, perhaps we might increase the growing instead. We are speaking from experience. Here are a couple of examples of reforestation projects we have been involved in, both in developed and emerging economies, which can be easily replicated.

Growing Trees in the Azores, Portugal

The Azores islands are located in the middle of the North Atlantic, and being ranked as one of the top sustainable islands in the world to visit by National Geographic (yes, even ahead of Hawaii and Bermuda) it has no shortage of trees. But that is no reason to become complacent.

The Regional Government has set up an award winning reforestation program in connection with rehabilitating the ecosystem around one of the islands’ most emblematic lakes in Furnas. The surrounding agricultural properties were acquired using public funds, and now there is no shortage of land on which to grow trees.

Once a year certain municipalities trim their London Plane trees – one of the most widely planted urban tree species. A particular advantage of this tree is that a branch cut with a certain size, usually greater than 2 meters, can grow into a sturdy tree simply by sticking it in the ground. And there are many thousands of these cut each year, which traditionally end up being burned or dumped in a landfill.

The trees before the trimming…

… and right after

Our role was simply to coordinate the collection of some cuttings in the main city and transport them to Furnas, where they could be planted. Unfortunately this year we were constrained by the mode of transport, where only a small truck was available. But going forward we hope to plant thousands of new trees in this manner. And everybody wins: the project increases its forested area, the municipality saves money on landfill charges and the planet gets more trees.

[Note: We would like to thank Arq. Clara Neto and Mr. Jorge Viveiros at the Municipality of Ponta Delgada, and Eng. Malgorzata Pietrzak and Eng. Miguel Ferreira at Azorina, the Government public company managing the Furnas project, for their invaluable assistance in this project.]

Saving the Atlantic Forest in Bahia, Brazil

The Atlantic Forest in Brazil is one of the most pristine ecosystems on the planet. Having suffered the brunt of a growing population in the coastal areas over centuries, less than 7% of the original area remains today. And yet it contains as much biodiversity as in the entire Amazon forest.

Eng. Pedro Passos de Carvalho decided to do something about it. He moved to Bahia in 2004 and founded Damata, an organization that teaches local populations to reforest degraded lands in the Atlantic Forest using native species only. They then grow a variety of value-added products under the new forest canopy, like chili peppers, flowers, a variety of fruits and cocoa beans.

?Chili trees planted under the new forest cover

Only organic production methods are used, using minimal locally-available resources. The chili peppers and fruits are dried using solar energy only. Everything is sold locally. The local people thus derive their livelihoods in a sustainable manner, having economic incentives aligned with the preservation of the native forest.

This requires a more active engagement than the Azores project for sure, but there are very tangible economic and social benefits. People are gradually returning to the forest, reducing population pressure in the favelas of Bahia. Dozens of hectares of previously depleted lands have been reforested. And thousands of trees were planted.

Scaling up

If a million people plant 1,000 trees that’s a billion trees – a nice round number, representing a new tree for every seven people on the planet. With a little ingenuity it is possible to get these many people involved, perhaps even more.

Today’s prototypical global corporation has hundreds of thousands of employees spread around the world. Engaging them and the communities they serve in any reforestation effort can make a big difference. And as we have seen, this can be done without burdening departmental budgets.

Kids of all ages can also do a fun project, nurturing seeds into trees to be planted at the end of the school year. According to the latest census in the US, there are about 50 million students and over 3 million full-time teachers in public elementary and secondary schools. And their families and friends can also pitch in.

In fact, all of us can easily get involved. Just look around your garden, community or park. Are there any areas where trees could be planted? Any bad landscaping that could be hidden behind the trees? It’s a pretty easy thing to do. The neighbors might want to chip in as well. After all, the whole neighborhood will benefit from the increase in real estate values.

The point is that there are so many ways to get involved. What we can’t continue doing is to think that somehow some government or NGO will reforest the Earth on our behalf, especially with the deforestation rates we are seeing each year. Each one of us can do something about it – even if it’s just planting one tree.

And if we do, getting to a billion new trees will be really easy.