{"id":12753,"date":"2022-07-20T09:45:04","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T14:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=12753"},"modified":"2022-07-20T09:45:10","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T14:45:10","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-plant-a-tree-or-a-trillion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/07\/20\/what-does-it-mean-to-plant-a-tree-or-a-trillion\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it mean to plant a tree (or a trillion)?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here, for instance, in Brazil’s Parque Nacional da Chapada dos Veadeiros?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Zach St. George’s New York Times <\/em>article “Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?<\/a>” is an excellent overview of the reality<\/em> of tree planting versus the ideal<\/em> of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the reality-checks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the 24 national plans that had been made public by then \u2014 61 countries now support the goal \u2014 nearly half the land involved was slated to be turned into plantations of fast-growing commercial trees.\u00a0The carbon these monocultures store is mostly released in a decade or so, when the trees are harvested<\/a> […]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Then there’s the debate between prairie and grassland ecologists and forest scientists:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists who study savannas, prairies and other grasslands say the dispute is a familiar one. There are large areas of the world where the climate could support forests, but where there are not forests. Some of these areas formerly held forests; others did not. Grassland scientists say tree-planting advocates have tended to view all those areas as equally ripe for reforestation. These experts argue that such areas are not degraded forests, but rather ancient, biodiverse and carbon-rich ecosystems, worthy of protection in their own right. \u201cThere\u2019s a peculiar forest fetish and obsession, which I think is traced back to Europe, possibly Germany,\u201d says William Bond, professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Capetown, South Africa, who studies grasslands. \u201cI think it\u2019s a massive misunderstanding of the natural world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And the very definition of tree planting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An even bigger challenge in trying to judge the collective achievements of the global tree-planting campaigns stems from the fact that people are not really planting trees, which offer a host of benefits and are famously tough, capable of surviving for hundreds or sometimes thousands of years and of weathering all kinds of trials and insults. They are planting seeds or seedlings, which offer few benefits and are not tough at all. \u201cSeedlings are like baby plants,\u201d says Lalisa Duguma, an ecosystem-restoration expert based in Australia. \u201cIf we don\u2019t care for babies, we know what happens.\u201d [. . .]<\/p>

Seedlings die by drought, fire and flood. They are eaten, shaded out, stepped on. Often they die of simple neglect. The changing climate \u2014 which scientists predict will rearrange species and ecosystems \u2014 makes the long-term fate of any individual tree even more uncertain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The point of the article, of course, is not that tree planting is not a good thing to do. There are plenty of examples offered of organizations who do it well — as “ecologically appropriate, climate-informed, community-centered reforestation,” as Jad Daley of American Forests puts it. It’s just that it’s more complicated than most people think, and that overplaying our “forest fetish” might not actually be ecologically appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entire article can be read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here, for instance, in Brazil’s Parque Nacional da Chapada dos Veadeiros? Zach St. George’s New York Times article “Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?” is an excellent overview of the reality of tree planting versus the ideal of it. Among the reality-checks:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[520594,196,4415],"tags":[710327,710328,15870,710326,710329,710332,710330,710331],"class_list":["post-12753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-politics","category-ecoculture","category-ecophilosophy","tag-forest-fetish","tag-grasslands","tag-new-york-times","tag-reforestation","tag-savannas","tag-tree-planting","tag-trillion-trees","tag-zach-st-george"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3jH","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8394,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/09\/18\/eco-humanities-glossolalia\/","url_meta":{"origin":12753,"position":0},"title":"Eco-humanities glossolalia","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I've just come across the earliest outline I wrote for the course I'm currently teaching (in its third incarnation), \"Environmental Literature, Arts, and Media.\" The course has also turned into a book project I'm working on, which will be a thematic primer to the environmental arts and humanities.\u00a0Both course and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1186,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/28\/clean-coal\/","url_meta":{"origin":12753,"position":1},"title":"“clean” coal","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 28, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Today is National Coal Ash Action Day, as MountainJustice.org reminds us -- see the information there on what you can do about it. Meanwhile, Climate Ground Zero reports on a fascinating case unfolding in West Virginia's coal country, where tree sitters have halted blasting of a mountaintop by Massey Coal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/-bMO66ajBN0\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1058,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/13\/amidst-the-ruins-of-motor-city\/","url_meta":{"origin":12753,"position":2},"title":"amidst the ruins of Motor City","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"As goes Motor City, so should go the world - or at least eco-activists might like to argue that. The archetypal home of American car culture, Detroit, has been decaying for years. It's now collapsed from a city of two million to less than half of that, and in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"brush_park_5.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/04\/brush_park_5.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5470,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/02\/17\/toward-an-ecophilosophical-cinema\/","url_meta":{"origin":12753,"position":3},"title":"Toward an ecophilosophical cinema","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"My paper for this year's Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, coming up next month in Boston, will focus on the two films that got a lot of side-by-side attention at last year's Cannes festival, Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Since a few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2012\/02\/39-275x116.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6901,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/09\/16\/mosaicultures\/","url_meta":{"origin":12753,"position":4},"title":"Mosa\u00efcultures","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Some pictures from the Mosa\u00efcultures international exhibition of horticultural arts at Montreal's Botanical Gardens. The exhibition continues until September 29. Lise Cormier's Mother Earth Story of a Chinese girl who loved cranes, drowned in a lake, and become one herself They don't look too happy with us... Bird tree Click\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"IMG_20130906_115745_999","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2013\/09\/IMG_20130906_115745_999-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3090,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/03\/23\/iland-slow-networks-symposium\/","url_meta":{"origin":12753,"position":5},"title":"iLAND Slow Networks symposium","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be in New York City this weekend to participate in the iLAND Symposium at the New School, at the invitation of iLAND founder and Artistic Director Jennifer Monson.\u00a0 iLAND is the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance, and this year's symposium, which runs through Friday evening and all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12753"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12767,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753\/revisions\/12767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}