This week BGCI, Kew and other contributors published a paper on 10 golden rules for reforestation and we will encourage people to join us for a virtual conference hosted by Kew and BGCI on February 24-26 entitled ‘Reforestation for biodiversity, carbon capture and livelihoods’. The conference will be opened by HRH Prince Charles and Dr Vahinala Raharinirina, Madagascar’s Minister of Environment.

This is part of our response to the mad rush by governments, corporates and others to get as many trees into the ground as possible, largely for carbon sequestration (see my October 2020 blog on this topic). The fact that the botanical (and academic) community has been critical of large scale planting of exotic monocultures, and has pointed out the threats this creates to biodiversity, has in itself attracted criticism that we are in some way anti-tree planting. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are simply pointing out that tree planting is not as simple as people think. The analogy I have used (which pre-COVID seemed outrageous….) is to ask people to imagine high level politicians and policymakers recommending a particular drug without first checking with the medical profession that it works and is not actually detrimental to health. Watch the video of the World Economic Forum’s launch of its one trillion trees campaign this time last year.

It’s a wonderfully diverse panel except for the fact that there is no botanical expertise on it. Where are the ecologists, foresters, plant conservationists and botanists? Although anyone with a spoon can administer medicine and anyone with a spade can plant a tree, it takes a certain level of technical knowledge to get the desired outcomes!

So how should our community respond? The idea of the paper and the conference is to give people the knowledge, tools and resources they need for better outcomes – particularly for biodiversity which, unlike, carbon and timber, is not a commodity. If we make the assumption that some stakeholders (particularly government agencies and NGOs) want to do the right thing for biodiversity and it isn’t just market forces at play, we need it make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

This means deploying data, knowledge and expertise from our sector. For example, the Ecological Restoration Alliance of Botanic Gardens (ERA) makes a range of training resources available on its website, including forest restoration manuals and species recovery briefs. Similarly, the Global Trees Campaign provides simple to understand training briefs in multiple languages covering a wide range of tree conservation disciplines and Kew’s Seed Information Database provides germination protocols and other seed data for tens of thousands of species.

To improve access to specialist expertise, BGCI will soon be launching a botanical Directory of Expertise covering disciplines like seed conservation, ecological restoration and conservation horticulture that can be searched on geographically, taxonomically and by topic. We also need to make information about diverse restoration projects, expertise hubs and training opportunities available, and are talking to a number of umbrella organisations about how best to do this. These include IUCN’s Bonn Challenge Secretariat, Trillion Trees, www.1t.org, the Global Evergreening Alliance and Crowther Labs’ Restor platform.

In parallel we need to work with governments and other actors to set up regional, country-level and local hubs of expertise where seed collectors and nursery managers can be trained to diversify their tree planting portfolios. An example of this approach is Tooro Botanical Gardens near Fort Portal in Uganda, which trains community members and supports a wider, national network of restoration nurseries designed to help Uganda meet its Bonn Challenge pledges.

Finally, we need to work with regulators and planners to make sure that biodiverse tree-planting is incentivised, and is factored in to land use planning. Without this, there will be limited demand for native species, and destructive, industrial monoculture tree planting will continue to grow to meet demand for carbon offsets and fast profits. Biodiversity is a long term public good, providing options for use and resilience to shocks and, for these reasons, governments need to use the levers at their disposal to protect and restore biodiverse habitats. Looking at the data gathered by FAO for the first State of the World’s Forest genetic Resources report in 2014, only 985 tree species are used in forestry worldwide (half of those in a single country) against a total of ca. 60,000 tree species in existence. We need to diversify rapidly and shift the monoculture mindset to something much more useful and sustainable. The impediments are not technical (botanic gardens and arboreta grow at least 18,000 tree species) – they are partly political and partly related to poor communication and failure to share skills across sectors. We hope that the paper and conference will be small steps that take us in the right direction and help to catalyse the change required. I hope you are able to join us.