Let’s End Transactional Reforestation
One of the questions we get most often at Trees, Water & People from well-meaning donors of all sizes is,
“So… how many trees can we plant for this many dollars”?
We get it - as consumers we all want to know what we get for our money. But I’m here to tell you, this approach isn’t helpful in the age of western megafires. The damaging effect of this practice is that it perpetuates a race to the bottom around reforestation.
It communicates that many dollars lead to this much forest… but the reality is so much more complex… and expensive.
Because when we fund a reforestation project that we want to succeed, we’re funding training, education, equipment, logistics, fuels reduction, erosion control, seed collection, and nursery infrastructure before we even have a seedling to put into the ground.
In the West, where megafires are becoming the norm, restoration is becoming much more difficult and much more costly, and we need donors to understand that. Getting a scarce local seed to become a mature tree is a decades long process, involving dozens of actors, continual investment, and many steps along the way.
So please, let’s stop reducing forest health to a X trees per Y dollars transaction, and let’s start asking questions when organizations speak in these terms.
Our commitment to you is that we will invest in the whole picture, over the long term, to increase the health of forests in the Americas. We will involve local communities, local nurseries, and local seed sources to ensure the best possible outcomes. And we will continue to share the layers of work that need to get done for it all to succeed.
Help us stamp out reductionist language in reforestation work - we’re gonna need bigger thinking to outsmart climate change.
