There’s a lot of talk, and a lot of action being taken to plant trees all around the world. I’m sure its easy to imagine that a guy that goes by the name TreeBanker would be happy about that, and I am.
There’s only one thing that makes me happier than hearing about people that are planting trees, that’s hearing about people planting FORESTS.
One of the great catastrophes of our time is the deforestation of the tropical rainforests of the planet. Experts estimate that approximately 1 acre of rainforest is being clearcut every second on the planet. There are a lot of different reasons for this deforestation. The demand for timber to build homes and furniture, clearing land for agriculture to feed the ever-growing population on the planet. These all make sense to a certain degree. We all need homes and food.
The problem isn’t that simple though.
In recent years land clearing for subsistence farming (slash and burn) has slowed as young people migrate to urban areas to live instead of farming like their ancestors. Apparently quite a bit of previous deforested land is actually reforesting itself naturally.
The greatest cause of deforestation on the planet now is clearing land for soy and oil palm plantations to make biofuels. This is driven by well intended but misguided policies to help countries reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and the greenhouse gasses they produce. The misguided part of the plan is that governments and land owners, in a rush to earn short-term profits actually increase the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere by destroying forests that are storing carbon. Experts calculate that if a rainforest is cleared to plant biofuel feedstock, it takes between 20 – 25 years to realize the “savings” in the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted into the atmosphere.
This brings me back to the topic of planting trees vs planting forests. In order to plant enough trees to compensate for the pace of deforestation on the planet we have to replant millions of acres of forests. There are a number of excellent tree planting programs out there. The United Nations ‘Billion Tree” campaign is one of them.
The problem with most (not all) tree planting programs is that they plant trees on donated land, or public land, or land that farmers offer to the projects. Most of these projects have no budget for protecting the trees they plant and its easy to imagine that many of the trees planted in these projects will suffer the same fate that the forest before them suffered.
The irony of all of this is that there is so much value in the trees that are planted. If (when) forests are planted in a thoughtful manner, with the intent of SUSTAINABLY harvesting some of the trees through time. The revenue from the lumber produced by those trees would easily pay to protect the rest of the forest.
The demand for lumber isn’t going away, but the forests are if we don’t come up with a better plan to fill that demand.
A business model based on harnessing the demand for lumber to pay for the creation of Sustainably Managed Permanent Rainforest Habitats could reverse the deforestation of the planet.
Government policies that allow logging companies to clearcut forests then drive away with their profits without replanting the land must be changed.
Planting trees is great but the planet needs it’s forests replanted in order to maintain any sense of biodiversity.
The demand for lumber has driven the deforestation of the planet for decades. Its time to start using that demand to replant and protect the remaining forests of the planet.
Eco Preservation Society’s Replanting the Rainforests Campaign uses this model. It’s Web 2.0 model is spreading the word about replanting the rainforests of the planet.
