It's no big secret that for decades, the Amazon rainforest has been losing trees much faster than they can be planted.
Finally the determined clear-cutting has caught up with us. On the heels of a report that the Amazon had lost so many trees that it not only no longer helped clean the air but contributed to carbon emissions — more than all the traffic in the US, even — Brazil announced a huge new reforestation plan.
As part of its plan to meet its Paris Accord obligations, Brazil needs to plant a lot of trees. Merely replacing what's being cut down is no longer an option.
We're talking 12 million hectares by 2030. The first step comes with a big experiment that will see the country plant 73 million trees across 30,000 hectares by 2023. Think about that — 73 million trees is just 1/400th of their 2030 goal.
So the stakes are high. "The fate of the Amazon depends on getting this right," says M. Sanjayan, CEO of Conservation International, which is one of Brazil's partners in the project.
It will be an intense undertaking using a strategy that puts a lot of people in a small area, spreading the seeds of 200 native forest species over every square meter of land.
That's right — they're planting seeds, not saplings. This is a long-term project, and it needs more than a single Johnny Appleseed on the job.
The idea is to end up with the biggest, strongest trees that can resist droughts and denser stands of trees at a fraction of the cost of planting saplings.
Perhaps most encouraging is that this massive Amazon replanting effort isn't the only one in the world. It's not even the biggest.
India and China are getting in on the action, too, in a competition that could benefit the whole planet.
Back in 2016, more than 800,000 people in India came together for a 24-hour tree-planting extravaganza like nobody has ever seen before.
Just imagine the entire city of San Francisco turning out to cram as many trees as they can into the ground in a day. The people of India managed 50 million.
As part of its Paris Accord goals, India pledged to reforest 12 percent of its land by 2030, so that replanting jamboree was just a start.
And maybe even a bit of a stunt to raise awareness. Showmanship counts!
Meanwhile, the largest reforestation effort in the world is happening in — surprise, surprise — China.
The country's Grain-for-Green program plans to reforest an incredible 69.2 million acres of land, basically reversing Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward that transformed forests into cropland.
One problem with their plan: they have only used one kind of tree so far — great for cleaning air and preventing soil erosion, but not so much for wildlife.
So here's hoping that India and Brazil have learned from China! And here's hoping that the giant experiments underway in the world's forests are big successes.
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