The Trillion Tree Campaign is a project which aims to plant one trillion trees worldwide. It seeks to repopulate the world's trees and combat climate change as a nature-based solution. The project was launched at PlantAhead 2018 in Monaco by Plant-for-the-Planet.
In the fall of 2018, the project's official website was published in
order to register, monitor, and donate trees to reforestation projects
around the world.
The campaign is a continuation of the activities of the earlier Billion Tree Campaign, instigated by Wangari Maathai, who founded the Green Belt Movement in Africa in 1977.
As of 30 May 2021, 164 restoration projects participate in the campaign and 13.96 billion trees have been planted worldwide.
History
Billion Tree Campaign
The Green Belt Movement began its activity in Africa in 1977, eventually planting more than 30 million trees.
The Billion Tree Campaign was inspired by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai,
founder of the Green Belt Movement. When an executive in the United
States told Maathai their corporation was planning to plant a million
trees, her response was: "That's great, but what we really need is to
plant a billion trees."
The project was launched in 2006 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) under the patronage of Prince Albert II of Monaco and the World Agroforestry Centre-ICRAF as a response to the challenges of climate change, as well as to a wider array of sustainability challenges from water supply to biodiversity loss, and achieved the initial target of planting a billion trees in 2007. The billionth tree, commonly known as an African olive, was planted in Ethiopia in November 2007.
In 2008, the campaign's objective was raised to 7 billion trees, a goal
which was surpassed three months before its target of the climate change
conference that was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009.
The 2-billionth tree took root as part of the United Nation's World Food Programme agroforestry initiative. The campaign's target was then raised to seven billion trees.
In 2009, UNEP mobilized action across the globe through the "Twitter
for Trees" campaign. UNEP pledged to plant one tree to feed into the
Billion Tree Campaign for every follower who joined from 5 May 2009 to
World Environment Day on 5 June 2009. The campaign was a success, with
10,300 people following the page by World Environment Day.
The World Organization of the Scout Movement also planted trees under the campaign, in line with its mandate to study and protect nature across several countries.
United Nations Peacekeeping missions
also joined the campaign and planted trees within their field missions
in East Timor, Ivory Coast, Darfur, Lebanon, Haiti, Congo, and Liberia,
among others.
After the campaign
Felix Finkbeiner
addressed the United Nations in a speech to open the International
Year of Forests 2011, saying: "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. We can start the Trillion Tree Campaign."
In December 2011, after more than 12 billion trees had been planted,
UNEP formally handed management of the program to the youth-led
not-for-profit Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation (an organisation that had been participating in the Billion Tree Campaign since 2007), based in Tutzing, Germany. Momentum has since continued, with 40,000 young ambassadors spreading the message in over 100 countries.
In 2015, researcher Tom Crowther found that about 3 trillion trees exist in the world and later it was also estimated that planting 1.2 trillion more trees would counteract 10 years of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
In September 2019, the Plant-for-the-Planet app was released
under an open-source license. It allowed users to register planted trees
or to plant trees by donating to different tree-planting organizations
around the world. The foundation does not take any commissions for donations made through the campaign.
One Trillion Tree initiative
The 2020 World Economic Forum,
held in Davos, announced the creation of the One Trillion Tree
initiative platform for governments, businesses, and civil society to
provide support to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2020–2030), led by UNEP and FAO. Forum participant Donald Trump, then-president of the United States, announced that the government of the U.S. would commit to the initiative.
Reforestation (occasionally, reafforestation) is the natural or intentional restocking of existing forests and woodlands (forestation) that have been depleted, usually through deforestation, but also after clearcutting.
Reforestation can be used to undo and rectify the effects of deforestation and improve the quality of human life by absorbing pollution and dust from the air, rebuilding natural habitats and ecosystems,reducing global warming via biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and harvesting for resources, particularly timber, but also non-timber forest products. Since the beginning of the 21st century, significant attention has been given to reforestation as a technique for reducingclimate change as one of the best methods to do it. To this end, the international community has agreed on Sustainable Development Goal 15,
which promotes implementation of sustainable management of all types of
forests, stop deforestation, restore degraded forests and increase
afforestation and reforestation.
Though net loss of forest area has decreased substantially since
1990, the world is unlikely to achieve the target set forth in the
United Nations Strategic Plan for Forests
to increase forest area by 3 percent by 2030. While deforestation is
taking place in some areas, new forests are being established through
natural expansion or deliberate efforts in others. As a result, the net
loss of forest area is less than the rate of deforestation and it too is
decreasing: from 7.8 million hectares per year in the 1990s to 4.7
million hectares per year during 2010–2020. In absolute terms, the
global forest area decreased by 178 million hectares between 1990 and
2020, which is an area about the size of Libya.
Management
A debated issue in managed reforestation is whether or not the succeeding forest will have the same biodiversity
as the original forest. If the forest is replaced with only one species
of tree and all other vegetation is prevented from growing back, a monoculture
forest similar to agricultural crops would be the result. However, most
reforestation involves the planting of different selections of
seedlings taken from the area, often of multiple species. Another important factor is the natural regeneration of a wide variety of plant and animal species that can occur on a clear cut. In some areas the suppression of forest fires for hundreds of years has resulted in large single aged and single species forest stands.
The logging of small clear cuts and/or prescribed burning actually
increases the biodiversity in these areas by creating a greater variety
of tree stand ages and species.
Reforestation is not only used for recovery of accidentally destroyed forests. In some countries, such as Finland, many of the forests are managed by the wood products and pulp and paper industry.
In such an arrangement, like other crops, trees are planted to replace
those that have been cut. The Finnish Forest Act from 1996 obliges the
forest to be replanted after felling.
In such circumstances, the industry can cut the trees in a way to allow
easier reforestation. The wood products industry systematically
replaces many of the trees it cuts, employing large numbers of summer
workers for tree planting work. For example, in 2010, Weyerhaeuser reported planting 50 million seedlings. However replanting an old-growth forest with a plantation is not replacing the old with the same characteristics in the new.
In just 20 years, a teak plantation in Costa Rica
can produce up to about 400 m³ of wood per hectare. As the natural teak
forests of Asia become more scarce or difficult to obtain, the prices
commanded by plantation-grown teak grows higher every year. Other
species, such as mahogany, grow more slowly than teak in Tropical America but are also extremely valuable. Faster growers include pine, eucalyptus, and Gmelina.
Reforestation, if several indigenous species are used, can provide other benefits in addition to financial returns, including restoration of the soil, rejuvenation of local flora and fauna, and the capturing and sequestering of 38 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare per year.
The reestablishment of forests is not just simple tree planting. Forests are made up of a community of species and they build dead organic matter
into soils over time. A major tree-planting program could enhance the
local climate and reduce the demands of burning large amounts of fossil
fuels for cooling in the summer.
For climate change mitigation
Climate change mitigation icon
Forests are an important part of the global carbon cycle because trees and plants absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. By removing this greenhouse gas from the air, forests function as terrestrial carbon sinks,
meaning they store large amounts of carbon. At any time, forests
account for as much as double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Forests remove around three billion tons of carbon every year. This amounts to about 30% of anthropogenic all carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, an increase in the overall forest cover around the world would mitigate global warming.
At the beginning of the 21st century, interest in reforestation
grew over its potential to mitigate climate change. Even without
displacing agriculture and cities, earth can sustain almost one billion hectares of new forests. This would remove 25% of carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere and reduce its concentration to levels that existed
in the early 20th century. A temperature rise of 1.5 degrees would
reduce the area suitable for forests by 20% by the year 2050, because
some tropical areas will become too hot. The countries that have the most forest-ready land are: Russia, Canada, Brazil, Australia, United States and China.
The four major strategies are:
Increase the amount of forested land through reforestation
Increase density of existing forests at a stand and landscape scale
Expand the use of forest products that sustainably replace fossil-fuel emissions
Reduce carbon emissions caused by deforestation and degradation
Implementing the first strategy is supported by many organizations around the world. For example, in China, the Jane Goodall Institute, through their Shanghai Roots & Shoots division, launched the Million Tree Project in Kulun Qi, Inner Mongolia to plant one million trees. China used 24 million hectares of new forest to offset 21% of Chinese fossil fuel emissions in 2000. In Java, Indonesia
newlywed couples give whoever is conducting their wedding 5 seedlings.
Each divorcing couple gives 25 seedlings to whoever divorces them. Costa Rica doubled its forest cover in 30 years using its system of grants and other payments for environmental services, including compensation for landowners. These payments are funded through international donations and nationwide taxes.
The second strategy has to do with selecting species for
tree-planting. In theory, planting any kind of tree to produce more
forest cover would absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
However, a genetically modified variant might grow much faster than unmodified specimens.
Some of these cultivars are under development. Such fast-growing trees
would be planted for harvest and can absorb carbon dioxide faster than
slower-growing trees.
Impacts on temperature are affected by the location of the forest. For example, reforestation in boreal or subarctic regions has less impact on climate. This is because it substitutes a high-albedo,
snow-dominated region with a lower-albedo forest canopy. By contrast,
tropical reforestation projects lead to a positive change such as the
formation of clouds. These clouds then reflect the sunlight, lowering temperatures.
Planting trees in tropical climates with wet seasons
has another advantage. In such a setting, trees grow more quickly
(fixing more carbon) because they can grow year-round. Trees in tropical
climates have, on average, larger, brighter, and more abundant leaves
than non-tropical climates. A study of the girth of 70,000 trees across Africa
has shown that tropical forests fix more carbon dioxide pollution than
previously realized. The research suggested almost one fifth of fossil
fuel emissions are absorbed by forests across Africa, Amazonia and Asia.
Simon Lewis stated, "Tropical forest trees are absorbing about 18% of
the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year from burning fossil
fuels, substantially buffering the rate of change."
As of 2008 1.3 billion hectares of tropical regions were
deforested every year. Reducing this would reduce the amount of planting
needed to achieve a given degree of mitigation.
Methods
A study
finds that almost 300 million people live on tropical forest
restoration opportunity land in the Global South, constituting a large
share of low-income countries' populations, and argues for prioritized
inclusion of "local communities" in forest restoration projects.
Using existing trees and roots
Planting
new trees often leads to up to 90% of seedlings failing. However, even
in deforested areas, existing root systems often exist. Growth can be
accelerated by pruning and coppicing
where a few branches of new shoots are cut and often used for charcoal,
itself a major driver of deforestation. Since new seeds are not
planted, it is cheaper. Additionally, they are much more likely to
survive as their root systems already exist and can tap into groundwater
during harsher seasons with no rain. While this method has existed for centuries, it is now sometimes referred to as Farmer-managed natural regeneration.
Financial incentives
Some incentives for reforestation can be as simple as a financial
compensation. Streck and Scholz (2006) explain how a group of scientists
from various institutions have developed a compensated reduction of
deforestation approach which would reward developing countries that
disrupt any further act of deforestation. Countries that participate and
take the option to reduce their emissions from deforestation during a
committed period of time would receive financial compensation for the
carbon dioxide emissions that they avoided.
To raise the payments, the host country would issue government bonds or
negotiate some kind of loan with a financial institution that would
want to take part in the compensation promised to the other country. The
funds received by the country could be invested to help find
alternatives to the extensive cutdown of forests. This whole process of
cutting emissions would be voluntary, but once the country has agreed to
lower their emissions they would be obligated to reduce their
emissions. However, if a country was not able to meet their obligation,
their target would get added to their next commitment period. The
authors of these proposals see this as a solely government-to-government
agreement; private entities would not participate in the compensation
trades.
The 2020 World Economic Forum, held in Davos, announced the creation of the Trillion Tree Campaign,
which is an initiative aiming to plant 1 trillion trees across the
globe. The implementation can have big environmental and societal
benefits but needs to be tailored to local conditions.
One plan in this region involves planting a nine-mile width of trees
on the Southern Border of the Sahara Desert for stopping its expansion
to the south. The Great Green Wall initiative is a pan-African
proposal to "green" the continent from west to east in order to battle
desertification. It aims at tackling poverty (through employment of
workers required for the project) and the degradation of soils in the
Sahel-Saharan region, focusing on a strip of land that is 15 km (9 mi)
wide and 7,500 km (4,750 mi) long from Dakar to Djibouti.
As of May 2020, 21 countries joined the project, many of them are
directly affected by the expansion of the Sahara desert. It should
create 10 millions green jobs by 2030.
In 2019, Ethiopia
begun a massive tree planting campaign "Green Legacy" with a target to
plant 4 billion trees in 1 year. In 1 day only, over 350 million trees
were planted.
Costa Rica
Through reforestation and environmental conservation, Costa Rica doubled its forest cover in 30 years.
Costa Rica has a long-standing commitment to the environment. The country is now one of the leaders of sustainability, biodiversity,
and other protections. It wants to be completely fossil fuel free by
2050. The country has generated all of its electric power from renewable
sources for three years as of 2019. It has committed to be carbon-free
and plastic-free by 2021.
As of 2019, half of the country's land surface is covered with forests. They absorb a huge amount of carbon dioxide, combating climate change.
In the 1940s, more than 75% of the country was covered in mostly
tropical rainforests and other indigenous woodlands. Between the 1940s
and 1980s, extensive, uncontrolled logging
led to severe deforestation. By 1983, only 26% of the country had
forest cover. Realizing the devastation, policymakers took a stand.
Through a continued environmental focus they were able to turn things
around to the point that today forest cover has increased to 52%, 2
times more than 1983 levels.
An honorable world leader for ecotourism and conservation, Costa Rica has pioneered the development of payments for environmental services.
Costa Rica's extensive system of environmental protection has been
encouraging conservation and reforestation of the land by providing
grants for environmental services. The system is not just advanced for
its time but is also unparalleled in the world. It received great
international attention.
The country has established programs to compensate landowners for
reforestation. These payments are funded through international
donations and nationwide taxes. The initiative is helping to protect the
forests in the country.
"Robert Blasiak, a research fellow at the University of Tokyo,
said: "Taking a closer look at what Costa Rica has accomplished in the
past 30 years may be just the impetus needed to spur real change on a
global scale."
"Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado has called the climate
crisis "the greatest task of our generation"; one that his country is
strongly committed to excel in."
Canada
Natural
Resources Canada (The Department of Natural Resources) states that the
national forest cover was decreased by 0.34% from 1990 to 2015, and
Canada has the lowest deforestation rate in the world. The forest industry is one of the main industries in Canada, which contributes about 7% of Canadian economy, and about 9% of the forests on earth are in Canada.
Therefore, Canada has many policies and laws to commit to sustainable
forest management. For example, 94% of Canadian forests are public land,
and the government obligates planting trees after harvesting to public
forests.
China
In China,
extensive replanting programs have existed since the 1970s, which have
had overall success. The forest cover has increased from 12% of China's
land area to 16%. However, specific programs have had limited success. The "Green Wall of China," an attempt to limit the expansion of the Gobi Desert, is planned to be 2,800 miles (4,500 km) long and to be completed in 2050. China plans to plant 26 billion trees in the next decade; that is, two trees for every Chinese citizen per year. China requires that students older than 11 years old plant one tree a year until their high school graduation.
Between 2013 and 2018, China planted 338,000 square kilometres of forests, at a cost of $82.88 billion.
By 2018, 21.7% of China's territory was covered by forests, a figure
the government wants to increase to 26% by 2035. The total area of China
is 9,596,961 square kilometres (see China), so 412,669 square kilometres more needs to be planted. According to the government's plan, by 2050, 30% of China’s territory should be covered by forests.
In 2017, the Saihanba Afforestation Community won the UN Champions of the Earth Award in the Inspiration and Action category for their successful reforestation efforts, which began upon discovering the survival of a single tree.
From 2016-2021, 3976 square kilometers of forests were planted in the Tibet Autonomous Region, with plans for 20 million trees to be planted before 2023.
Germany
The
first historically proven successful method of afforestation with
coniferous seeds on a large scale was developed in 1368 by the Nuremberg
councillor and merchant Peter Stromer (around 1315-1388) in the
Nuremberg Reichswald. This forest area thus became the first artificial
forest in the world and Stromer the "father of forest culture".
Reforestation is required as part of the federal forest law. 31%
of Germany is forested, according to the second forest inventory of
2001–2003. The size of the forest area in Germany increased between the
first and the second forest inventory due to forestation of degenerated bogs and agricultural areas.
India
Jadav Payeng had received national awards for reforestation efforts, known as the "Molai forest". He planted 1400 hectares of forest on the bank of river Brahmaputra alone. There are active reforestation efforts throughout the country. In 2016, India more than 50 million trees were planted in Uttar Pradesh and in 2017, more than 66 million trees were planted in Madhya Pradesh. In addition to this and individual efforts, there are startup companies, such as Afforest, that are being created over the country working on reforestation.
Lots of plantation is being carried out in Indian continent but the
survivability is very poor and especially for massive plantation, it is
nearly about less than 20%. To improve the forest cover and to achieve
the national mission of forest cover of 33%, need to improve the way we
do plantation. Rather than mass planting, need to work on performance
measurement & tracking of trees growth. In account of this, a
leading non-profit Ek Kadam Sansthan
is working and prepared a module of mass tracking of the plantation.
The pilot has been done successfully and hopes to implement nationwide
by the end of 2021.
Ireland
In 2019 the government of Ireland decided to plant 440 million trees by 2040. The decision is part of the government's plan to make Irelandcarbon neutral by 2050 with renewable energy, land use change and carbon tax.
Israel
Since
1948, large reforestation and afforestation projects were accomplished
in Israel. 240 million trees have been planted. The carbon sequestration
rate in these forests is similar to the European temperate forests.
Japan
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery explain that about two-thirds of Japanese land is covered with forests, and it was almost unchanged from 1966 to 2012.
Japan needs to reduce 26% of green house gas emission from 2013 by 2030
to accomplish Paris Agreement and is trying to reduce 2% of them by
forestry.
Mass environmental and human-body pollution along with relating
deforestation, water pollution, smoke damage, and loss of soils caused
by mining operations in Ashio, Tochigi became the first environmental social issue in Japan, efforts by Shōzō Tanaka had grown to large campaigns against copper operation. This led to the creation of 'Watarase Yusuichi Pond', to settle the pollution which is a Ramsar site today. Reforestation was conducted as a part of afforestation
due to inabilities of self-recovering by the natural land itself due to
serious soil pollution and loss of woods consequence in loss of soils
for plants to grow, thus needing artificial efforts involving
introducing of healthy soils from outside. Starting from around 1897,
about 50% of once bald mountains are now back to green.
Lebanon
For thousands of years, Lebanon was covered by forests, one particular species of interest, Cedrus libani was exceptionally valuable and was almost eliminated due to lumbering operations.
Virtually every ancient culture that shared the Mediterranean Sea
harvested these trees from the Phoenicians who used cedar, pine and
juniper to build their famous boats to the Romans, who cut them down for
lime-burning kilns, to early in the 20th century when the Ottomans used
much of the remaining cedar forests of Lebanon as fuel in steam trains.
Despite two millennia of deforestation, forests in Lebanon still cover
13.6% of the country, and other wooded lands represent 11%.
Law No. 558, which was ratified by the Lebanese Parliament on
April 19, 1996, aims to protect and expand existing forests, classifying
all forests of cedar, fir,
high juniper (juniperus excelsa), evergreen cypress (cupressus
sempervirens) and other trees, whether diverse or homogeneous, whether
state-owned or not as conserved forests.
Since 2011, more than 600,000 trees, including cedars and other
native species, have been planted throughout Lebanon as part of the
Lebanon Reforestation Initiative, which aims to restore Lebanon's native
forests.
Projects financed locally and by international charity are performing
extensive reforestation of cedar being carried out in the Mediterranean
region, particularly in Lebanon and Turkey, where over 50 million young
cedars are being planted annually.
The Lebanon Reforestation Initiative has been working since 2012
with tree nurseries throughout Lebanon to help grow stronger tree
seedlings that are better suited to survive once planted.
In 2020, the Pakistani government launched an initiative to hire
63,600 laborers to plant trees in the northern Punjab region, with
indigenous species such as acacia, mulberry and moringa. This initiative was meant to alleviate unemployment caused by lockdowns to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Philippines
In
2011, the Philippines established the National Greening Program as a
priority program to help reduce poverty, promote food security,
environmental stability, and biodiversity conservation, as well as
enhance climate change mitigation and adaptation in the country. The
program paved the way for the planting of almost 1.4 billion seedlings
in about 1.66 million hectares nationwide during the 2011-2016 period.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
ranked the Philippines fifth among countries reporting the greatest
annual forest area gain, which reached 240,000 hectares during the
2010-2015 period.
4000 years ago Anatolia was 60% to 70% forested. Although the flora of Turkey remains more biodiverse than many European countries deforestation occurred during both prehistoric and historic times, including the Roman and Ottoman periods.
Since the first forest code of 1937 the official government definition of 'forest' has varied.
According to the current definition 21 million hectares are forested,
an increase of about 1 million hectares over the past 30 years, but only
about half is 'productive'. However, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization definition of forest about 12 million hectares was forested in 2015, about 15% of the land surface.
The amount of greenhouse gas emissions by Turkey removed by forests is very uncertain.As of 2019
however a new assessment is being made with the help of satellites and
new soil measurements and better information should be available by
2020.
According to the World Resources Institute
"Atlas of Forest Landscape Restoration Opportunities" 50 million
hectares are potential forest land, a similar area to the ancient
Anatolian forest mentioned above. This could help limit climate change in Turkey. To help preserve the biodiversity of Turkey more sustainable forestry has been suggested. Improved rangeland management is also needed.
National Forestation Day is on 11 November but, according to the agriculture and forestry trade union although volunteers planted a record number of trees in 2019, most had died by 2020 in part due to lack of rainfall.
United States
It is the stated goal of the US Forest Service to manage forest resources sustainably. This includes reforestation after timber harvest, among other programs.
United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) data shows that forest occupied about 46% of total U.S. land in
1630 (when European settlers began to arrive in large numbers), but had
decreased to 34% by 1910. After 1910, forest area has remained almost
constant although U.S. population has increased substantially.
In the late 19th century the U.S. Forest Service was established in
part to address the concern of natural disasters due to deforestation,
and new reforestation programs and federal laws such as The
Knutson-Vandenberg Act (1930) were implemented. The U.S. Forest Service
states that human-directed reforestation is required to support natural
regeneration and the agency engages in ongoing research into effective
ways to restore forests.
As for the year 2020, United States of America planted
2.5 billion trees per year. At the beginning of the year 2020, a bill
that will increase the number to 3.3 billion, was proposed by the Republican Party, after President Donald Trump joined the Trillion Tree Campaign.
Organizations
Ecosia is a non-profit organisation based in Berlin, Germany, that has planted over 100 million trees worldwide as of July 2020.
Trees for the Future has assisted more than 170,000 families, in 6,800 villages of Asia, Africa and the Americas, to plant over 35 million trees.
Ecologi is an organisation that has its members pay a monthly fee
to offset their carbon emissions, primarily through tree planting. As
well as this they work to promote sustainability and low carbon
alternatives. So far over 2 million trees have been planted through
Ecologi.
Team Trees was a 2019 fundraiser with an initiative to plant 20 million trees. The initiative was started by American YouTubersMrBeast and Mark Rober, and was mostly supported by YouTubers. The Arbor Day Foundation will work with its local partners around the world to plant one tree for each dollar they raise.
Trees For Life (Brooklyn Park)
is a state based organisation, which was established back in 1981 and
delivers conservation, revegetation and community training programs. It
now has thousands of active supporters. and energizes activity within communities
Many companies are trying to achieve carbon offsets by Nature-based solutions like reforestation, including mangrove forests and soil restoration. Among them are Microsoft and Eni.
Increasing the forest cover of Earth by 25% will offset the human
emissions in the latest 20 years. In any case it will be necessary to
pull from the atmosphere the CO2
that already have been emitted. However, it can work only if the
companies will stop to pump new emissions to the atmosphere and stop
deforestation.
Related concepts
A similar concept, afforestation, refers to the process of restoring and recreating areas of woodlands or forests that may have existed long ago but were deforested or otherwise removed at some point in the past or lacked it naturally (e.g., natural grasslands). Sometimes the term "re-afforestation" is used to distinguish between the original forest cover and the later re-growth of forest to an area. Special tools, e.g. tree planting bars, are used to make planting of trees easier and faster.
Another alternative strategy, proforestation,
is similar as it can be used to counteract the negative environmental
and ecological effects of deforestation through growing an existing
forest intact to its full ecological potential.
Criticism
Competition with other land uses
Reforestation
competes with other land uses, such as food production, livestock
grazing, and living space, for further economic growth. Reforestation can divert large amounts of water from other activities. A map created by the World Resources Institute in collaboration with the IUCN
identifies 2 billion hectares for potential forest restoration. It is
criticised for including 900 million hectares of grasslands.
Environmental risks
Reforestation
often has the tendency to create large fuel loads, resulting in
significantly hotter combustion than fires involving low brush or
grasses.
Reduced harvesting rates and fire suppression have caused an increase
in the forest biomass in the western United States over the past
century. This causes an increase of about a factor of four in the
frequency of fires due to longer and hotter dry seasons.
Effects on biodiversity
Reforesting
sometimes results in extensive canopy creation that prevents growth of
diverse vegetation in the shadowed areas and generating soil conditions
that hamper other types of vegetation. Trees used in some reforesting
efforts (e.g., Eucalyptus globulus) tend to extract large amounts of moisture from the soil, preventing the growth of other plants. The European Commission found that, in terms of environmental services, it is better to avoid deforestation than to allow for deforestation to subsequently reforest, as the former leads to irreversible effects in terms of biodiversity loss and soil degradation.
Carbon stocks
There is also the risk that, through a forest fire or insect outbreak, much of the stored carbon in a reforested area could make its way back to the atmosphere. Furthermore, the probability that legacy carbon will be released from soil is higher in younger boreal forest. Global greenhouse gas emissions caused by damage to tropical rainforests may be have been underestimated by a factor of six. Additionally the effects of af- or reforestation will be farther in the future than those of proforestation. It takes much longer − several decades − for the benefits for global warming to manifest to the same carbon sequestration benefits from mature trees in tropical forests and hence from limiting deforestation.
Some researchers note that instead of planting entirely new areas,
reconnecting forested areas and restoring the edges of forest, to
protect their mature core and make them more resilient and
longer-lasting, should be prioritized.
Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere. By other authors, civil society is used in the sense of
1) the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens or
2) individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.
Sometimes the term civil society is used in the more
general sense of "the elements such as freedom of speech, an independent
judiciary, etc, that make up a democratic society" (Collins English Dictionary). Especially in the discussions among thinkers of Eastern and Central Europe, civil society is seen also as a normative concept of civic values.
Etymology
The term civil society goes back to Aristotle's phrase koinōnía politikḗ (κοινωνία πολιτική), occurring in his Politics, where it refers to a ‘political community’, commensurate with the Greek city-state (polis) characterized by a shared set of norms and ethos, in which free citizens on an equal footing lived under the rule of law. The telos or end of civil society, thus defined, was eudaimonia (τὸ εὖ ζῆν tò eu zēn)
(often translated as human flourishing or common well-being), in as man
was defined as a ‘political (social) animal’ (ζῷον πολιτικόν zōon politikón). The concept was used by Roman writers, such as Cicero, where it referred to the ancient notion of a republic (res publica). It re-entered into Western political discourse following one of the late medieval translations of Aristotle's Politics into Latin by Leonardo Bruni who as a first translated koinōnía politikḗ into societas civilis.
With the rise of a distinction between monarchical autonomy and public
law, the term then gained currency to denote the corporate estates (Ständestaat) of a feudal elite of land-holders as opposed to the powers exercised by the prince.
It had a long history in state theory, and was revived with particular
force in recent times, in Eastern Europe, where dissidents such as Václav Havel
as late as in the 1990s employed it to denote the sphere of civic
associations threatened by the intrusive holistic state-dominated
regimes of Communist Eastern Europe. The first post-modern usage of civil society as denoting political opposition stems from writings of Aleksander Smolar in 1978–79. However the term was not in use by Solidarity labor union in 1980–1981.
They argued that the political element of political organizations
facilitates better awareness and a more informed citizenry, who make
better voting choices, participate in politics, and hold government more
accountable as a result.
The statutes of these political organizations have been considered
micro-constitutions because they accustom participants to the
formalities of democratic decision making.
More recently, Robert D. Putnam has argued that even non-political organizations in civil society are vital for democracy. This is because they build social capital,
trust and shared values, which are transferred into the political
sphere and help to hold society together, facilitating an understanding
of the interconnectedness of society and interests within it.
Others, however, have questioned the link between civil society and robust democracy. Some have noted that the civil society actors have now obtained a remarkable amount of political power without anyone directly electing or appointing them. It has been argued that civil society aided the Nazi Party in coming to power in 1930s Germany. It has also been argued that civil society is biased towards the global north. Partha Chatterjee has argued that, in most of the world, "civil society is demographically limited."
Finally, other scholars have argued that, since the concept of civil
society is closely related to democracy and representation, it should in
turn be linked with ideas of nationality and nationalism.
Constitutional economics
Constitutional economics is a field of economics and constitutionalism
which describes and analyzes the specific interrelationships between
constitutional issues and functioning of the economy including budget process. The term "constitutional economics" was used by American economist James M. Buchanan as a name for a new budget planning and the latter's transparency to the civil society, are of the primary guiding importance to the implementation of the rule of law.
Also, the availability of an effective court system, to be used by the
civil society in situations of unfair government spending and executive impoundment of any previously authorized appropriations, becomes a key element for the success of any influential civil society.
Global
Civil lecture at Budapest Brainbar
Critics and activists currently often apply the term civil society to the domain of social life which needs to be protected against globalization, and to the sources of resistance thereto, because it is seen as acting beyond boundaries and across different territories.
However, as civil society can, under many definitions, include and be
funded and directed by those businesses and institutions (especially
donors linked to European and Northern states) who support globalization, this is a contested use.
Rapid development of civil society on the global scale after the fall
of the communist system was a part of neo-liberal strategies linked to
the Washington Consensus.
Some studies have also been published, which deal with unresolved
issues regarding the use of the term in connection with the impact and
conceptual power of the international aid system (see for example Tvedt
1998).
On the other hand, others see globalization as a social phenomenon expanding the sphere of classical liberal values, which inevitably led to a larger role for civil society at the expense of politically derived state institutions.
The integrated Civil Society Organizations (iCSO) System, developed by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), facilitates interactions between civil society organizations and DESA.
Civil societies also have become involved in the environmental
policy making process. These groups impact environmental policies by
setting an agenda on fixing the harm done to the environment. They also
get the public informed about environmental issues, which increases the
public demand for environmental change.
History
From a historical perspective, the actual meaning of the concept of
civil society has changed twice from its original, classical form. The
first change occurred after the French Revolution, the second during the
fall of communism in Europe.
Western antiquity
The concept of civil society in its pre-modern classical republican understanding is usually connected to the early-modern thought of Age of Enlightenment
in the 18th century. However, it has much older history in the realm
of political thought. Generally, civil society has been referred to as a
political association governing social conflict through the imposition
of rules that restrain citizens from harming one another.
In the classical period, the concept was used as a synonym for the good
society, and seen as indistinguishable from the state. For instance, Socrates taught that conflicts within society should be resolved through public argument using ‘dialectic’,
a form of rational dialogue to uncover truth. According to Socrates,
public argument through ‘dialectic’ was imperative to ensure ‘civility’
in the polis and ‘good life’ of the people. For Plato,
the ideal state was a just society in which people dedicate themselves
to the common good, practice civic virtues of wisdom, courage,
moderation and justice, and perform the occupational role to which they
were best suited. It was the duty of the ‘philosopher king’ to look after people in civility. Aristotle
thought the polis was an ‘association of associations’ that enables
citizens to share in the virtuous task of ruling and being ruled. His koinonia politike as political community.
The concept of societas civilis is Roman and was introduced by Cicero.
The political discourse in the classical period, places importance on
the idea of a ‘good society’ in ensuring peace and order among the
people. The philosophers in the classical period did not make any
distinction between the state and society. Rather they held that the
state represented the civil form of society and ‘civility’ represented
the requirement of good citizenship.
Moreover, they held that human beings are inherently rational so that
they can collectively shape the nature of the society they belong to. In
addition, human beings have the capacity to voluntarily gather for the
common cause and maintain peace in society. By holding this view, we can
say that classical political thinkers endorsed the genesis of civil
society in its original sense.
The Middle Ages saw major changes in the topics discussed by political philosophers. Due to the unique political arrangements of feudalism,
the concept of classical civil society practically disappeared from
mainstream discussion. Instead conversation was dominated by problems of
just war, a preoccupation that would last until the end of Renaissance.
Early modern history
The Thirty Years' War and the subsequent Treaty of Westphalia heralded the birth of the sovereign states system.
The Treaty endorsed states as territorially-based political units
having sovereignty. As a result, the monarchs were able to exert
domestic control by circumventing the feudal lords by raising their own
armed troops.
Henceforth, monarchs could form national armies and deploy a
professional bureaucracy and fiscal departments, which enabled them to
maintain direct control and authority over their subjects. In order to
meet administrative expenditures, monarchs exerted greater control over
the economy. This gave birth to absolutism. Until the mid-eighteenth century, absolutism was the hallmark of Europe.
The absolutist concept of the state was disputed in the Enlightenment period.
As a natural consequence of Renaissance, Humanism, and the scientific
revolution, the Enlightenment thinkers raised fundamental questions such
as "What legitimacy does heredity confer?", "Why are governments
instituted?", "Why do some human beings have more basic rights than
others?", and so on. These questions led them to make certain
assumptions about the nature of the human mind, the sources of political
and moral authority,
the reasons behind absolutism, and how to move beyond absolutism. The
Enlightenment thinkers believed in the power of the human mind to
reason. They opposed the alliance between the state and the Church as
the enemy of human progress and well-being because the coercive
apparatus of the state curbed individual liberty and the Church
legitimated monarchs by positing the theory of divine origin. Therefore,
both were deemed to be against the will of the people.
Strongly influenced by the atrocities of Thirty Years' War, the
political philosophers of the time held that social relations should be
ordered in a different way from natural law conditions. Some of their attempts led to the emergence of social contract
theory that contested social relations existing in accordance with
human nature. They held that human nature can be understood by analyzing
objective realities and natural law conditions. Thus they endorsed that
the nature of human beings should be encompassed by the contours of
state and established positive laws. Thomas Hobbes
underlined the need of a powerful state to maintain civility in
society. For Hobbes, human beings are motivated by self-interests
(Graham 1997:23). Moreover, these self-interests are often contradictory
in nature. Therefore, in state of nature,
there was a condition of a war of all against all. In such a situation,
life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" (Ibid: 25). Upon
realizing the danger of anarchy, human beings became aware of the need
of a mechanism to protect them. As far as Hobbes was concerned,
rationality and self-interests persuaded human beings to combine in
agreement, to surrender sovereignty to a common power (Kaviraj
2001:289). Hobbes called this common power, state, Leviathan.
John Locke
had a similar concept to Hobbes about the political condition in
England. It was the period of the Glorious Revolution, marked by the
struggle between the divine right of the Crown and the political rights
of Parliament. This influenced Locke to forge a social contract theory
of a limited state and a powerful society. In Locke's view, human beings
led also an unpeaceful life in the state of nature. However, it could
be maintained at the sub-optimal level in the absence of a sufficient
system (Brown 2001:73). From that major concern, people gathered
together to sign a contract and constituted a common public authority.
Nevertheless, Locke held that the consolidation of political power can
be turned into autocracy, if it is not brought under reliable
restrictions (Kaviraj 2001:291). Therefore, Locke set forth two treaties
on government with reciprocal obligations. In the first treaty, people
submit themselves to the common public authority. This authority has the
power to enact and maintain laws. The second treaty contains the
limitations of authority, i. e., the state has no power to threaten the
basic rights of human beings. As far as Locke was concerned, the basic
rights of human beings are the preservation of life, liberty and
property. Moreover, he held that the state must operate within the
bounds of civil and natural laws.
Both Hobbes and Locke had set forth a system, in which peaceful
coexistence among human beings could be ensured through social pacts or
contracts. They considered civil society as a community that maintained
civil life, the realm where civic virtues and rights were derived from
natural laws. However, they did not hold that civil society was a
separate realm from the state. Rather, they underlined the co-existence
of the state and civil society. The systematic approaches of Hobbes and
Locke (in their analysis of social relations) were largely influenced by
the experiences in their period. Their attempts to explain human
nature, natural laws, the social contract and the formation of
government had challenged the divine right theory. In contrast to divine
right, Hobbes and Locke claimed that humans can design their political
order. This idea had a great impact on the thinkers in the Enlightenment
period.
The Enlightenment thinkers argued that human beings are rational
and can shape their destiny. Hence, no need of an absolute authority to
control them. Both Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a critic of civil society, and Immanuel Kant
argued that people are peace lovers and that wars are the creation of
absolute regimes (Burchill 2001:33). As far as Kant was concerned, this
system was effective to guard against the domination of a single
interest and check the tyranny of the majority (Alagappa 2004:30).
Modern history
G. W. F. Hegel completely changed the meaning of civil society, giving rise to a modern liberal understanding of it as a form of non-political society as opposed to institutions of modern nation state. While in classical republicanism civil society where synonymous with political society,
Hegel distinguished political state and civil society, what was
followed by Tocqueville's distinction between civil and political
societies and associations, repeated by Marx and Tönnies.
Unlike his predecessors, Hegel considered civil society (German: bürgerliche Gesellschaft)
as a separate realm, a "system of needs", that is the, "[stage of]
difference which intervenes between the family and the state." Civil society is the realm of economic relationships as it exists in the modern industrial capitalist society, for it had emerged at the particular period of capitalism and served its interests: individual rights and private property.
Hence, he used the German term "bürgerliche Gesellschaft" to denote
civil society as "civilian society" – a sphere regulated by the civil code. This new way of thinking about civil society was followed by Alexis de Tocqueville and Karl Marx as well.
For Hegel, civil society manifested contradictory forces. Being the
realm of capitalist interests, there is a possibility of conflicts and
inequalities within it (ex: mental and physical aptitude, talents and
financial circumstances). He argued that these inequalities influence
the choices that members are able to make in relation to the type of
work they will do. The diverse positions in Civil Society fall into
three estates: the substantial estate (agriculture), the formal estate
(trade and industry), and the universal estate (civil society).
A man is able to choose his estate, though his choice is limited by the
aforementioned inequalities. However, Hegel argues that these
inequalities enable all estates in Civil Society to be filled, which
leads to a more efficient system on the whole.
Karl Marx
followed the Hegelian way of using the concept of civil society. For
Marx, the emergence of the modern state created a realm of civil society
that reduced society to private interests competing against each other.
Political society was autonomised into the state, which was in turn
ruled by the bourgeois class (consider also that suffrage only belonged,
then, to propertied men). Marx, in his early writings, anticipated the
abolition of the separation between state and civil society, and looked
forward to the reunification of private and public/political realms
(Colletti, 1975). Hence, Marx rejected the positive role of state put
forth by Hegel. Marx argued that the state cannot be a neutral problem
solver. Rather, he depicted the state as the defender of the interests
of the bourgeoisie. He considered the state to be the executive arm of
the bourgeoisie, which would wither away once the working class took
democratic control of society.
The above view about civil society was criticised by Antonio Gramsci
(Edwards 2004:10). Departing somewhat from Marx, Gramsci did not
consider civil society as a realm of private and alienated
relationships. Rather, Gramsci viewed civil society as the vehicle for
bourgeois hegemony, when it just represents a particular class. He
underlined the crucial role of civil society as the contributor of the
cultural and ideological capital required for the survival of the
hegemony of capitalism.
Rather than posing it as a problem, as in earlier Marxist conceptions,
Gramsci viewed civil society as the site for problem-solving.
Misunderstanding Gramsci, the New Left
assigned civil society a key role in defending people against the state
and the market and in asserting the democratic will to influence the
state.
At the same time, neo-liberal thinkers consider civil society as a site
for struggle to subvert Communist and authoritarian regimes. Thus, the term civil society occupies an important place in the political discourses of the New Left and neo-liberals.
Post-modern history
After
decades of forbidden national days, on the 15th of March, 1989, the
communist regime of Hungary allowed people to celebrate the 1956 revolution.
Parallel with the state celebration at the National Museum, independent
organisations called the public to gather at the statue of Petőfi Sándor.
It is commonly believed
that the post-modern way of understanding civil society was first
developed by political opposition in the former Soviet bloc East
European countries in the 1980s. However, research shows that communist propaganda had the most important influence on the development and popularization of the idea instead, in an effort to legitimize neoliberal transformation in 1989. According to theory of restructurization of welfare systems, a new way of using the concept of civil society became a neoliberalideology legitimizing development of the third sector as a substitute for the welfare state. The recent development of the third sector is a result of this welfare systems restructuring, rather than of democratization.
From that time stems a political practice of using the idea of civil society instead of political society.
Henceforth, postmodern usage of the idea of civil society became
divided into two main ones: as political society and as the third sector
– apart from plethora of definitions. The Washington Consensus
of the 1990s, which involved conditioned loans by the World Bank and
IMF to debt-laden developing states, also created pressures for states
in poorer countries to shrink.
This in turn led to practical changes for civil society that went on to
influence the theoretical debate. Initially the new conditionality led
to an even greater emphasis on "civil society" as a panacea, replacing
the state's service provision and social care, Hulme and Edwards suggested that it was now seen as "the magic bullet."
By the end of the 1990s civil society was seen less as a panacea amid the growth of the anti-globalization movement
and the transition of many countries to democracy; instead, civil
society was increasingly called on to justify its legitimacy and
democratic credentials. This led to the creation by the UN of a high
level panel on civil society. However, in the 1990s with the emergence of the nongovernmental organizations and the new social movements (NSMs) on a global scale, civil society as a third sector
became treated as a key terrain of strategic action to construct ‘an
alternative social and world order.’ Post-modern civil society theory
has now largely returned to a more neutral stance, but with marked
differences between the study of the phenomena in richer societies and
writing on civil society in developing states.
Link to the public sphere
Jürgen Habermas said that the public sphere encourages rational will-formation; it is a sphere of rational and democratic social interaction.
Habermas analyzes civil society as a sphere of "commodity exchange and
social labor" and public sphere as a part of political realm. Habermas
argues that even though society was representative of capitalist
society, there are some institutions that were part of political
society. Transformations in economy brought transformations to the
public sphere. Though these transformations happen, a civil society
develops into political society when it emerges as non-economic and has a
populous aspect, and when the state is not represented by just one
political party. There needs to be a locus of authority, and this is
where society can begin to challenge authority. Jillian Schwedler points
out that civil society emerges with the resurrection of the public
sphere when individuals and groups begin to challenge boundaries of
permissible behaviour – for example, by speaking out against the regime
or demanding a government response to social needs – civil society
begins to take shape.
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