Why our trees cost $5
We sell carbon credits with ecological benefits, tree-planting is one means to this end.
Yes, we too can plant a tree for $1 — well $1.36 to be exact. But we’re not in the business of tree planting, we’re in the business of creating revenue-generating economies that stop deforestation — and reverse its path.
Here’s why you get what you pay for in a tree-planting projects…
Photo by Carmen Villegas
“To be without trees would, in the most literal way, be without our roots.”
New paths create new questions. After centuries of razing forests, the urgency to reforest is a global reality, and carbon credits offer one way to address this need. But this new market raises sooooo many questions. What does reforestation mean? How much does it cost to plant a tree? Why should we save the rainforest? Why is reforestation important? Which are the benefits of reforestation? Do we need forestry projects? Which are the reforestation facts? Is it true that we can plant trees to reduce carbon dioxide? (Yes, we hear these every day — and more!)
The truth is, planting a tree is much more than putting a seed in the ground. Seedlings require care to overcome the hostility of their environment and become fully functional beings. Also, reforesting is much more than just replacing trees. A forest is a complex habitat of a large number of species and trees are just one of them.
In tropical forests, the trees’ life cycle includes many animal and bird species which help in their spread and regeneration. The trees cannot be separated from the life that surrounds them.
Beyond trees, to ecosystems
Between 1990 and 2020, the planet lost 420 million hectares of forest area. That’s why reforestation has become the number one tool for environmental conservation. But the practice has shown that a seedling left to its tiny fate has little chance of survival. Natural selection is at play in wild forests, but we cannot afford to wait for natural selection in disrupted ecosystems. Restoration of degraded forests must be accompanied by a forestry program that monitors the growth process of each tree in order to give it a head start against the external agents that threaten its survival.
Tree planting initiatives must also be accompanied by“strategies for facilitating the recolonization of non-trees species”. Healthy forests are complex and interconnected systems. All natural biodiversity — animals, fungi, and even microbes are crucial for forest recovery and survival and they will not regenerate spontaneously in the timescales we need for climate balance.
Not all tree-planting programs have a positive impact. A focus on new trees alone can be counterproductive. We’ve learned from failed programs — that projects have actually cleared virgin jungles because of tree-planting rewards. So programs must first protect existing forests; as well as generate livelihoods for small farmers who live nearby. Failure to replace destructive economies with holistically beneficial ones leads to doomed outcomes.
Also, too many replanting programs that claim large numbers or $1 per tree prices are monoculture, non-native species. Not only can the replanted groves be invasive (eucalyptus or bamboo in the Amazon) — they are also at risk of disease. Programs must use seeds and seedlings with “appropriate levels of genetic diversity consistent with local or regional genetic variations”. That is the only way to “ensure the survival and resilience of a planted forest”.
Even though seedlings can be very inexpensive, we need to keep in mind everything they need to grow successfully. Like children, a baby tree is only the beginning of a grand story. It's not just planting a tree, it’s also creating a safe environment for it to become part of a forest.
So the next time you tell your friend you planted a tree – pick a tree, and a forest, you can really get behind!
Cheap trees don’t get the job done
“A tree with strong roots laughs at storms.”
Everyone has heard about the tree projects that plant a gazillion trees. Mostly from social media: “A gazillion trees, planted now! Going cheap, only 25¢ each! Saving the planet!”
First, fictional trees are very inexpensive to plant. A million fictional trees, costing 25 cents each, still nets the promoter a nifty $250k, all for a little bit of time, some photographs, and some advertising spend! Yes, that is exactly what we are saying — too many international seedlings awaiting a dirt bath never existed in the first place.
Second, many promoters conveniently leave out nifty information about their trees. Like the fact that a monoculture invasive species from Australia is getting planted near the native Amazonian virgin jungle. Or that the planting is being done on land that is rightfully owned by an indigenous tribe without their permission. Or that none of the trees have been watered and so they all died. Or they conveniently forgot to see if they died because there was no monitoring plan in place. Or that the trees are being planted in native grasslands destroying that ecosystem. Or that the incentives were all wrong so farmers cut down virgin forest to get paid to grow more trees. Or… well you get the picture.
The devil can be in the details.
Our trees cost more because they are worth more
Healthy forests are essential to humanity. Their generosity gives our planet “ biodiversity habitat, clean water, climate regulation, erosion prevention, crop pollination, soil fertility, and flood control”, as the World Bank states. Losing them it’s something we can't afford. To avoid this calamity, we need well-structured tree-planting projects. Without them, we cannot reduce deforestation, save biodiversity and provide the local communities the support they need to get them involved.
Saving rainforests is essential for the planet and all species that live in it. The carbon offset of trees helps balance the Earth’s climate. Rainforests help to maintain the water cycle all over the world and the disruption of it will lead to famine and disease. Rainforests produce the ingredients for more than 25% of modern medicines. And the reasons go on and on.
Successful reforestation requires a lot of preparatory work. The first step is to understand and respect the ecosystem we want to restore. It is not about planting trees aimlessly. It’s necessary to learn which species are native, and which species hold value to local peoples. Good plantations are planned with topographic maps to optimize trees that are adapted to the site and conserve biodiversity.
In jungle-adjacent plots, trees are often planted in sequence to aid existing regeneration. We need to make a delicate weaving of different species of trees so that the more delicate fauna exiled by deforestation return. It is useless to make monocultures or fill the landscape with fast-growing trees that don't belong to that ecosystem, such as pines or eucalyptus. And equally useless to fill a plot with trees such that there is no space for rarer trees that cannot be successfully planted to creep in.
Caring for a forest takes time and that’s why the cost of tree planting goes far beyond 25¢ each. When local people get involved in the process, they bring attention, time, and incentives that foreign entities — no matter how well-intentioned — simply cannot provide. Offering them employment to improve their livelihoods is vital for a reforestation project to succeed. “Forest protection, land preparation, planting, and maintenance” are some of the jobs they can do even better than foreign personnel, due to their ancestral knowledge. If forestry programs don't involve local communities, they will simply move to another plot and continue with deforestation. Microscopic views always help to understand the value of every action. Let's summarize to enlighten the rules for a good forestry program that would lead to a real solution to clear-cutting:
Ensure the project’s economic sustainability: this is the only way to offer the locals a new job, such as conservation and reforestation.
Restore and protect the existing forest: a healthy forest regenerates itself and that's why it can be our first ally.
Investigate the native trees before reforesting: planting the wrong trees will lead to more problems than benefits. Plant the correct ones and maximize biodiversity.
Make topographic maps and studies of the area to choose the trees: only then will the trees survive the surrounding conditions.
Offer educational tools to monitor trees and propagate them: An abandoned tree has very little chance of survival.
Only $5 to secure a big future
At Savimbo, we believe in small starts, real progress, and compound growth. No, we have not planted a gazillion trees. We have planted 2000 trees as of this month, with ten smallfamers willing to experiment with us on experimental subplots of farms that are otherwise conserved.
Want to know what we’re up to with this small start?
We’ve been running experiments on sprouting native trees. There are more than 3k different species of trees in our smallfarmers land. Not all of them can be identified and many of them have complex life cycles (i.e. flowering once a year, eaten by a monkey, and sprouting from a pile of miraculously complex tropical poo). We want to regrow the native jungle, and that means learning more about it than academics have before.
We’ve been using biochar and bokashi. Biochar is a charred organic material that also stores carbon. It reuses organic material to make the soil richer. Bokashi is a tea made from microbes harvested from the native jungle. It’s used to activate biochar. The two together make healthy organic soil that native trees can use to grow healthy and strong in their natural environment, reducing chemical use and also increasing survival rate!
We’ve been experimenting with agrobiodiversity crops. Our smallfarmers want plots that are revenue generating after they're planted. We’ve been growing Acai and Chontaduro species, and local superfoods, and talking to distributors about how to make viable subsistence economies from the sale of these foods.
We’ve been A/B testing plots. Some of our plots are planted in strips that enable the nearby jungle to grow into the plot. Some are in a grid near shade trees. This encourages more species than we could plant while enabling the jungle to grow back faster.
We’ve been studying survival rates. We started with five species hand-picked by local indigenous experts. But we discovered that one of the species we planted, Barbasco, wasn’t doing very well, it's a shade tree and open plots are simply too much sun. So we’re super glad that we started with experiments before investing a lot of time and money into the plots. We’re going to plant Barbasco in stages once the initial plots are a bit taller.
We’ve been teaching smallfarmers. Teaching the process of reforestation and a bunch of reforestation techniques to smallfarmers is one of our major goals. This is the safest way to ensure the survival of trees in South America and to reduce one of the biggest threats to the tropical rainforest biome.
We’ve been going slow and making sure the growers are happy with their profits. We admit about one farmer a month for reforestation. We’re very selective because we’re concerned about the economic impact of reforestation plots on farmers’ livelihoods. Are the reforested plots growing fast enough to replace the income from cattle grazing with carbon credits?
Buying a carbon credit is planting a tree. Planting a tree is rebuilding the jungle. Giving their home back to the animals that have lost their habitats due to decades of mindless deforestation is to give to ourselves the home that we are losing by taking no action: the Earth.
Our future only costs $5
Written by Melibea and Drea Burbank, MD. Melibea is a published writer in Colombia, and Drea is an MD-technologist.