Around the world observances of the importance of growing trees have been taking place for centuries, with the first documented celebration of trees taking place in Spain way back in 1594.
A tree planting celebration known as ‘Arbor Day’ first took place in the United States almost 300 years later. In 1872, an estimated one million trees were planted in Nebraska on its first Arbor Day. More than 45 states and territories were celebrating Arbor Day each year by 1920.
Forest restoration initiatives have spread around the world, such as Kenya's Green Belt Movement, which was founded in 1977 by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Professor Wangari Maathai.
Today Arbor Day is a national holiday in all US states. It usually takes place on the last Friday in April, but can vary to coincide with the best planting weather in different areas of the country.
The Arbor Day Foundation is a nonprofit organization using reforestation and urban forestry to solve issues of climate change, community, and biodiversity. Our organization celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022, and has helped plant around 500 million trees in 50 countries in that time.
Last year, our organization announced an ambitious target of growing the same number again in just five years. We will focus on areas both in the US and abroad that have the greatest need and will benefit most from new trees.
Trees are helping to solve some of the most pressing issues people and the planet face today — and the world need trees now more than ever. Our goal to grow 500 million trees is ambitious in scale, but the real impact of this work comes with the focus of where these trees will be grown.
Our Foundation uses powerful data-gathering tools to target areas and neighbourhoods of greatest need. These can highlight the communities that are most nature-deprived and also experience other socioeconomic disadvantages.
Research has shown that trees can cool towns and cities by up to 10 degrees. This helps to mitigate extreme heat which kills more Americans than all other natural disasters combined each year. It also disproportionately affects underserved communities.
This isn't the only health issue trees can help with - neighbourhoods with more trees tend to have lower childhood asthma rates. And there's a mental health benefit too - the more connected people feel nature, the greater their sense of well-being.
Jan 16, 2024 Digest
The impact of restoring trees around the world.
Companies from across sectors are working together through the World Economic Forum’s 1t.org initiative, which serves the global movement to conserve, restore and grow a trillion trees by 2030. More than 100 companies have pledged over 12 billion trees in over 100 countries. In January 2024, 1t.org welcomed new pledges from five companies: Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL), Burberry China, Go To Group, RPG Enterprises and Vale.
Organisations work collaboratively through the 1t.org Corporate Alliance. Member companies commit to boosting their local communities and forests and implementing a Paris Agreement-aligned target to reduce emissions. The 1t.org Corporate Alliance brings companies together to support the 1t.org’s vision to conserve, restore and grow one trillion trees by 2030 by committing to leadership, action, integrity, transparency and learning and connecting enterprises with 1t.org’s community of innovators, partners and regional chapters.
Companies from diverse sectors such as mining and automotive manufacturing are investing in forest conservation and restoration. Meta has partnered with the National Indian Carbon Coalition (NICC) to ensure that carbon-reducing plans include the leadership, traditional ecological knowledge, and vision of Indigenous peoples. Mahindra has also committed to planting over 1 million trees per year through its Project Hariyali initiative, and has already planted over 20 million trees. Its aim is to create functional forests for local communities to enhance the livelihoods of smallholders and marginal farmers while restoring forest ecosystems. This work is in line with the World Economic Forum’s efforts to guide companies to use Indigenous knowledge in the conservation and restoration of landscapes.
Forests are critical to the health of the planet. They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers. They harbour 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, provide habitats for many species, and are a source of subsistence for 350 million people.
Degradation and loss of forests are destabilizing the planet on a scale unseen in human history. We have lost nearly half of the 6 trillion trees that existed on Earth before the onset of agriculture 12,000 years ago. Each year we lose around 15 billion more.
The cost to business is increasingly evident. More than half of our annual global GDP, or $44 trillion, is potentially threatened by nature loss. As trees disappear, the services they offer are undermined, reducing the productivity of soils and natural carbon sinks, diminishing our access to clean water and reducing our resilience to extreme weather events.
Launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020 in support of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, 1t.org supports the growing momentum on nature-based solutions to address climate change and nature loss.
1t.org brings private companies together under the Corporate Alliance, and the 1t.org Knowledge Exchange offers corporates curated knowledge and opportunities to share learnings and experiences. These learning materials help companies put ecologically and socially responsible approaches in place that contribute to the needs of forests, local communities, and global decarbonization goals. For instance, 1t.org profiles global standards like the IUCN Global Standard on Nature-based Solutions to help ensure planning is informed by local knowledge and scientific evidence.
With rapid advances in monitoring technology, 1t.org is collaborating with a group of partners to connect 1t.org’s reporting process with geospatial platforms and ground-level data collection. Tentree’s veritree, for instance, uses blockchain to validate successful planting efforts through collecting and sharing ground-level data. Restor informs and connects restoration initiatives, using geospatial data layers.
1t.org is especially focused on driving impact in priority regions including:
The United States through our 1t.org US Chapter co-led by American Forests
1t.org Mexico Chapter co-led by Reforestamos and the AMERE coalition
African Union’s Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative
1t.org Canada Chapter, co-lead with Tentree
1t.org China Action co-led with China Green Foundation under the guidance of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration
Amazon Basin by focusing on the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy- India through the 1t.org India Platform
Through the 1t.org US Chapter, launched in August 2020, subnational governments and the US-based non-profit community alone have pledged over 50 billion trees by 2030. With regional working groups on topics such as forest carbon, US policy and urban forestry, the US Chapter demonstrates the power of business, government and civil society working together to protect and restore forests.
In March 2022 the 1t.org India Platform was launched to support the country’s commitments under the Paris Agreement to restore 26 million hectares of deforested and degraded land by 2030. And at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022, China’s Special Envoy for Climate Change announced that, with the World Economic Forum and China Green Foundation, China will plant and conserve 70 billion trees by 2030.
1t.org and the Global Landscapes Forum’s Youth in Landscapes Initiative have co-convened the #GenerationRestoration Youth Hub, a diverse global network of over 80 youth ecopreneurs, practitioners and activists.
In partnership with UpLink, the Forum invites partners to launch and support innovation challenges to address issues relating to the natural world. Organizations can then sign up to propose solutions to the challenges. There have been over 11 global challenges – including Trillion Trees, #GenerationRestoration, and Carbon Market Challenges – as well as regional challenges in India, the US, the Amazon and the Sahel. Combined, these have resulted in over 1,000 submitted solutions, and a cohort 149 recognized Top Innovators that is being supported through dedicated accelerator programmes.
Collaboration and partnerships are key to meet the trillion trees vision.
We encourage companies that have committed to set a company-wide emissions reduction target, such as a 1.5C Science-Based Target or credible net-zero goal by or before 2050, to pledge their forest commitments.
Companies can also support 1t.org’s vision to conserve, restore and grow 1 trillion trees by 2030 by pledging their forest commitments through the 1t.org Corporate Alliance.
The global goal to conserve, restore and grow 1 trillion trees is ambitious but it is achievable. Join the movement.
Oct 10, 2023 Digest
Recent controversy around whether we should be planting trees to combat climate change is a distraction. No credible scientist or conservationist has ever claimed that we can solve the climate crisis with trees alone. But there is plenty of robust scientific evidence to show that we can’t get there without them.
The science is clear, and repeated studies continue to tell us the same thing: the absolute priority must be to end our reliance on fossil fuels. Burning coal, oil and gas is the single biggest contributor to global warming, and despite numerous global public and private sector commitments, we continue to emit more greenhouse gases year-on-year.OVER
How is the World Economic Forum fighting the climate crisis?
However, the science is equally clear that we cannot meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement without the conservation and restoration of nature. Carbon capture technologies will be part of the solution in the long term but are still in their infancy, unproven, and in no way ready to absorb the amount of carbon dioxide needed – even with the required reduction and halting of harmful emissions – to keep us on track for a 1.5-degree pathway.
Nature-based solutions are a cost-effective, natural technology that is available to us right now and can provide a third of what is needed to limit climate change. Trees, and more specifically, forests, are a crucial part of that; they both regulate local weather patterns and influence the global climate. So, the protection of the world’s forests that are still standing and the restoration of forests that have been lost, as well as forested land that has been degraded, is essential in the fight against climate change.
Yet, deforestation continues at pace, especially in tropical rainforests, which are some of the most effective carbon-storage systems on the planet. To limit global warming, we must therefore end deforestation. The science now tells us that simply protecting our standing forests is not enough; we must also restore what has been lost.
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By forest restoration, we do not mean the planting of large monoculture tree plantations; we mean the careful restoration of complex forest ecosystems, with a diversity of native tree-species, growing the right trees, in the right places, in the right way and looking after them over time, so that the forest is restored for the long term, with all the benefits that brings for people, nature and the climate.
Crucially, and this is a point that is so often overlooked, it is not all about carbon.
Forests harbour most of the Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity. As human beings, we rely on biodiversity for life – for the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. According to recent State of the World’s Forests reports, forests contain 60,000 different tree species, 80% of amphibian species, 75% of bird species, and 68% of the world’s mammal species. Yet, so often the mistake made is to view forest restoration only through the lens of carbon-capture. We must move away from this binary view of forests if we are to begin to understand their true value to humanity, and therefore the imperative to restore them.
As the UN Environment Programme has noted, forests also provide more than 86 million green jobs. Of those living in extreme poverty, over 90% are dependent on forests for food or livelihoods. Global restoration at scale means enabling community-led and locally driven initiatives that create sustainable livelihoods and promote biodiversity for the well-being of the people who depend upon it. Only when the restoration and protection of complex forest ecosystems benefit those who live in and depend upon the forest, so that tree planting becomes true forest restoration, will the long-term carbon capture that we so badly need be achieved.
There is no time left for arguing the point over whether tree planting can “solve the crisis.” It won’t all by itself. First, we must urgently cut fossil fuel use. But restoring the world’s forests – in the right way – will help us to safeguard the future of the planet, and our own future.