A bleak future

In a world where the leader of the free world doesn’t believe in man-made climate change, and has taken the USA out of the Paris Climate Pact, it can sometimes look pretty bleak on the environmental front. The wildfires, floods, and deadly heatwaves of recent weeks are definitely hitting home – things are changing a lot sooner than we’d anticipated. But this isn’t a ‘doom and gloom’ blog. On every continent, there is now a desire to plant more trees (which we think is amazing) so we’ve put together a brief run down of what’s happening, as some light relief from all the bad climate change news:

Asia

This year, China aims to plant 6.6 million hectares of trees (an area the size of Ireland) in the north, and in the past 5 years they have spent over £61bn on tree planting!

You might have heard about this one already, but last year an incredible 66 million trees were planted in just 12 hours in the Madhya Pradesh area of India (banner photo). It was all done by 1.5 million volunteer as part of India’s commitment (to the Paris Climate Pact) to increase its forests by 5 million hectares before 2030.

“By planting trees we are not only serving Madhya Pradesh but the world at large.”

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan

South America

Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and Costa Rica have all pledged to restore deforested land twice the size of Britain in the next 2 years. It’s expected that Brazil will follow suit next year and announce plans to restore millions of hectares of forests.

Africa

The Great Green Wall project is nearly 15% complete, with 20 countries on board to restore land across the full 8000km width of Africa. Already 12m drought resistant trees have been planted in Senegal, 3m hectares of land has been restored in Burkina Faso, 5 million in Nigeria and  5 million in Niger. There’s many millions of hectares left to go, but it’s a damn good start.  

Photo Luc Forsythe for National Geographic

North America 

Every year, thousands of young people head to Canada from all over the world (above) to get involved in the massive re-plant that comes after the annual timber felling. Paid by the sapling, they plant thousands in a day and exert themselves move then marathon runners in the process. Most of Canada’s forests are publicaly owned, and since the 1980’s mandatory replanting has been required, to prevent unsustainable felling. Half a billion are planted every year, mostly in BC and Alberta.

Europe

Not only are we doing our bit to plant another 5 million trees, but our government announced plans this year for a Northern Forest spanning the width of northern England, with 50m trees set to be planted over 25 years.

German teenager Felix Finkbeiner has founded the Plant for the Planet movement which aims to plant 1 trillion trees in the next 30 years. He’s got some big partners, and has already inspired the planting of millions of trees and has his own Mexican ranch where employees will be planting 10 million trees in the next 2 years. He’s incredibly impressive – you can (and should) read more about him here.

Australasia

Tech company BioCarbon Engineering started using drones for large scale replanting in Australia – it sounds bizarre but it’s been so popular in Australia that projects are now being commissioned all over the world.

Drones survey the area, analysing soil types and existing vegetation, before another drone carrying biodegradable seed pods comes along and fires them at the ground (hard enough to penetrate) in the appropriate places with nutritional mix to aid germination.

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Be a part of the story

If you want to help us in our effort to plant another 5 million trees, then you can donate below or get involved in many other ways, by fundraising for us, volunteering, or just coming along to the Forest Centre. Be a part of the amazing, global story above and help us to 5 million.