Updated: Jun 16, 2023
There are over 3 trillion trees on Earth right now. They provide food, oxygen, shelter, fuel, and many other important things. Trees are essential for humans, organisms, and the environment, but their numbers are significantly dwindling. According to the journal Nature, approximately 42 million trees are cut down each day, which equates to 15 billion trees each year.
Planting trees is a great solution to climate change, biodiversity loss, and global poverty. As trees grow, they remove carbon dioxide and release oxygen into the atmosphere. This improves air quality and combats global warming. According to BrightView, one tree can provide one day’s worth of oxygen for a family of four.
Trees also protect endangered species, providing them with homes and food. This is important because many creatures are losing their homes and becoming extinct due to deforestation, hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters.
Trees can also conserve energy. They provide shade in the hotter months and block the howling wind in the winter. After trees soak up water from the ground, they allow the soil to store even more water, which can help preserve soil and prevent floods.
In some places, planting trees results in more jobs, which can help many people get out of poverty. Last year, the tree-planting organization, Eden, offered to pay villages to plant trees, which helped the village’s population grow from just 150 people a few years ago to more than 800 today. A villager who was a part of the Eden program said, “it seemed like a dream. I even joked with them that it sounds too good to be true.”
As we learn more about the importance of trees, governments are imposing laws to protect trees and many tree-planting organizations have started.
According to a study published last year in the journal Biological Conservation, the number of tree-planting organizations working in the tropical region has increased by nearly 300 percent since the early 1990s to more than 170. Most of that increase came in the last decade. The study also says that the number of trees those groups have planted has increased by nearly 5,000 percent.
Many tree-planting organizations are nonprofits. Some of these organizations plant trees themselves, while others play intermediary roles, receiving and distributing donations to other organizations that plant trees. One Tree Planted, Earth Day, the National Forest Foundation, Grow Clean Air, ReTree,
#TeamTrees
, One Dollar, one Tree, and Trees4Trees all promise to plant one tree for each dollar donated. Eden, a nonprofit organization that plants trees themselves will offer to plant trees in most places for as little as 15 cents. Trees for the Future plants trees on average for 25 cents.
Felix Finkbeiner, a fourth-grade German student, proposed to his class that children should plant one million trees in every country on Earth. This later turned into a children’s movement called Plant for the Planet that spread across the country. By 2010, the organization had planted its millionth tree. The following year, when Finkbeiner was 13, he spoke before the United Nations, as part of its Internal Year of Forests. At the closing of his speech he said, “it is now time that we work together. We combine our forces, old and young, rich and poor, and together we can plant a trillion trees.”
Sources: https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1658069791674x803889305887930100/Can%20Planting%20a%20Trillion%20New%20Trees%20Save%20the%20World_%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf
There are over 3 trillion trees on Earth right now. They provide food, oxygen, shelter, fuel, and many other important things. Trees are essential for humans, organisms, and the environment, but their numbers are significantly dwindling. According to the journal Nature, approximately 42 million trees are cut down each day, which equates to 15 billion trees each year.
Planting trees is a great solution to climate change, biodiversity loss, and global poverty. As trees grow, they remove carbon dioxide and release oxygen into the atmosphere. This improves air quality and combats global warming. According to BrightView, one tree can provide one day’s worth of oxygen for a family of four.
Trees also protect endangered species, providing them with homes and food. This is important because many creatures are losing their homes and becoming extinct due to deforestation, hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters.
Trees can also conserve energy. They provide shade in the hotter months and block the howling wind in the winter. After trees soak up water from the ground, they allow the soil to store even more water, which can help preserve soil and prevent floods.
In some places, planting trees results in more jobs, which can help many people get out of poverty. Last year, the tree-planting organization, Eden, offered to pay villages to plant trees, which helped the village’s population grow from just 150 people a few years ago to more than 800 today. A villager who was a part of the Eden program said, “it seemed like a dream. I even joked with them that it sounds too good to be true.”
As we learn more about the importance of trees, governments are imposing laws to protect trees and many tree-planting organizations have started.
According to a study published last year in the journal Biological Conservation, the number of tree-planting organizations working in the tropical region has increased by nearly 300 percent since the early 1990s to more than 170. Most of that increase came in the last decade. The study also says that the number of trees those groups have planted has increased by nearly 5,000 percent.
Many tree-planting organizations are nonprofits. Some of these organizations plant trees themselves, while others play intermediary roles, receiving and distributing donations to other organizations that plant trees. One Tree Planted, Earth Day, the National Forest Foundation, Grow Clean Air, ReTree,
#TeamTrees
, One Dollar, one Tree, and Trees4Trees all promise to plant one tree for each dollar donated. Eden, a nonprofit organization that plants trees themselves will offer to plant trees in most places for as little as 15 cents. Trees for the Future plants trees on average for 25 cents.
Felix Finkbeiner, a fourth-grade German student, proposed to his class that children should plant one million trees in every country on Earth. This later turned into a children’s movement called Plant for the Planet that spread across the country. By 2010, the organization had planted its millionth tree. The following year, when Finkbeiner was 13, he spoke before the United Nations, as part of its Internal Year of Forests. At the closing of his speech he said, “it is now time that we work together. We combine our forces, old and young, rich and poor, and together we can plant a trillion trees.”
Sources: https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1658069791674x803889305887930100/Can%20Planting%20a%20Trillion%20New%20Trees%20Save%20the%20World_%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf
