• Forests

Urban Areas In U.S. In Need Of Tree Equity To Mitigate Heat Island Effect

• 1 trillion trees
• canopy
• conservation
• Environmental Justice
• heat islands
• tree

US cities are spending millions in order to plant new trees, which represents “one of the best solutions cities have for fighting the ‘urban heat island effect’ in neighborhoods that are often blanketed with pavement and lack of greenery.” Climate change too.

Why This Matters: As we have reported previously, urban heat islands disproportionately affect Black neighborhoods due to a history of redlining and structural discrimination.

• Forests

California’s Cap and Trade Offset System Created A Market for Forest Preservation

• California
• cap and trade
• carbon offsets
• conservation
• market
• trees

The Wall Street Journal published an eye-opening piece yesterday by Ryan Dezember (with beautiful photos and video by Brett Carlsen) that describes a burgeoning national market in carbon offset credits created by landowners promising to leave trees on their land standing.  The buyers are “investing” in trees and holding the credits — and it’s not […]

• Forests

CA Teams Up With Federal Government to Thin Forests

• California
• extreme weather
• National Forest
• USDA
• wildfire

Over the weekend, California’s wildfires reached historic scale as a single fire covered 314,207-acres across Napa, Lake, Solano, and Sonoma counties. As New York Magazine reported, in just five days, more land has been burned than in all of 2019, and 500,000 of those acres are in and around the Bay Area. A storm that […]

• Forests

Dutch City Turn to Nature-Based Solutions to Fight Climate Change

• Netherlands
• tree planting
• urban forests
• urban greening

by Julia Fine, ODP Contributing Writer Climate change is already causing flooding and heatwaves worldwide. Thankfully, one Dutch city has a plan to tackle it. Arnhem, the capital city of the province Gelderland,  recently made a 10-year plan to re-landscape the city in order to deal with the impacts of climate change.  As part of […]

• Forests

Brazil Under Fire As Amazon Burning Is Connected to Soy and Beef Exports

• Amazon
• beef
• Bolsonaro
• Brazil
• deforestation
• environment
• science
• soy beans

A recent study published in Science found that a significant percentage of beef and soy exported from Brazil to the EU is connected with illegal deforestation. As YaleE360 reported  that “as much as 22 percent of soy and 60 percent of beef…back to illegal tree felling and fires in the Amazon and Cerrado regions.”

Why This Matters: The study’s lead author Raoni Rajão said, “Until now, agribusiness and the Brazilian government have claimed that they cannot monitor the entire supply chain, nor distinguish the legal from the illegal deforestation.” This new study undercuts that idea, showing that Brazil can (and must) monitor agribusiness’ connections to illegal deforestation.

• Forests

Are Mini Forests Coming to a City Near You?

• Forests
• Miyawaki forests
• tree planting
• urban forests

As the World Economic Forum recently wrote, miniature urban forests (often no bigger than a tennis court) planted using a method invented by a Japanese botanist in the 1970s are growing in popularity. Known as “Miyawaki” forests, these dense groups of trees are bursting with biodiversity and grow more quickly and absorb more CO2 than […]