This is the third and final part of my ” Plant, baby, plant “. After delving on agroforestry and urban forestry and their respective merits, I am finishing with the UNEP Billion Tree Campaign and its successor.
After reading the first two articles, you might be more than willing to plant trees. It is time for you to join Plant for the Planet Foundation, the global organization succeeding to the Billion Tree Campaign.
This have been since its beginning in 2006 a tremendous success as each times goals had been set, they had been exceeded.
Indeed, the first goal was to plant a billion tree, : people planted two billion, the second goal was even more ambitious with seven billion trees. Twelve billion were planted.
Given the success, the United Nations Environmental Program decided in 2010 to gather all the tree planting initiatives all around the world under the Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation. The founding partners are :
- The Green Belt Movement (from the late Professor Wangari Maathai ) ;
- The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation ;
- the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) ;
- the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Forestry ;
- and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
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A most ambitious goal
This new foundation has the most ambitious objective ever : to plant a trillion trees, or a thousand billion trees. The goal seems completely unrealistic, but here is an extract of their website :
There is still one billion hectares of free space on our earth where 1,000 billion trees could be planted. These trees would absorb an additional 10 billion tons of CO2 every year.
1,000 billion trees sounds like a huge amount, but it is possible. The Chinese alone planted 2.7 billion trees in 2009 as a contribution to the UNEP-Billion Tree Campaign.
10 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year ? Knowing that we are currently emitting around 36 billion tons, planting this many trees would help slow climate change by more than a quarter. A tall order !
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Get planting trees !
So, you’re ready to plant ? Whether you do it on your own in your garden or you want to do it in your town : go and join the local non governmental organization for help and more.
In any case, keep in mind the precious tips given by the UNEP on how to plant trees. Here are some additional resources you may need :
- Tips from the Arbor Day Foundation ;
- From Wiki How ;
- From the NGO Tree People.
Last but not least, when you are done planting, please make sure to register your trees.
An idea I totally agree with.
However, as I mentioned previously, I think there might be a problem regarding the “free space on our earth”, as China or others BRICS countries need more and more space to grow crops to feed their own people. This phenomenon might reduce the available space to plant trees and, sometimes, clear land of existing trees (Brasil).
I am not saying we should preserve land to make arable land at the expense of trees, but I think that political leaders will have to make wise arbitration in the coming years (and I think this is a new “field” for the agribusiness lobbies, which will anew raise questions about the transparency of our democracies – not to mention this kind of problems in states like China…).