Kenya's cities adopt Miyawaki method to restore lost ecological glory

To address shade inequality and rising heat deaths, the American Forests launched a digital tool in 2021 that scores geographic areas based on tree canopy and surface temperature, as well as other factors such as income, employment, race, age and health. It then calculates a Tree Equity Score and maps out the regions that have the greatest need for trees. With this information, Tucson aims to plant one million trees by 2030, and has already planted 120,000 over the past four years.

The Clean Green initiative empowers Yezidi women who escaped the 2014 ISIS genocide to rebuild their lives and enviornment by planting more than 2,000 trees, specifically chosen to withstand Iraq’s shifting climate. The grassroots group started with just five volunteers, but now has more than 40 members.

In Brazil's Amazon deforestation hotspot BR-163, small farmers and entrepreneurs are working to implement sustainable farming alternatives like agroecology, beekeeping and converting cattle pastures to grow local fruits to create a “bioeconomy,” despite a lack of institutional support.

The First Nations Garden, run by the Chi-Nations Youth Council, is a gathering space for the area’s 65,000 Native people, providing them with a garden and a highly-requested green space that hosts regular events and provides cultural resources and education while fostering community.

A collaboration between tree-planting organizations in Washington D.C. helps Catholic church properties to plant and care for trees. The free trees are an effort to combat urban heat and benefit the local environment.

The city of Chicago is offering municipal bond investors — specifically those interested in ESG investing — opportunities to fund social projects like planting 15,000 trees in historically disinvested neighborhoods over the next three years, converting motels and single-room buildings into housing for people transitioning out of homelessness and replacing the city’s gas-powered vehicles with electric.

As a part of the city’s carbon neutrality plan, Ann Arbor Michigan’s Community Action Network is decarbonizing homes in one of its most socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods by repairing, retrofitting, installing solar panels, and asking the community members for their input.

Volunteers of a nonprofit tree-planting initiative in Paris are planting pocket forests, based on Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki’s method, to increase biodiversity and combat extreme heat. These mini-forests are made of native species planted close together at random to mimic a natural forest.

Over 33,000 trees have been planted through the Campus Green Initiative at a Nigerian university. By planting the trees, they are able to mitigate the effects of strong winds that destroy buildings on campus. Funding the initiative can be difficult, but they are planning to grow the program to plant more trees.

After years of drought and land-clearing that left Niger with few trees left, the country now boasts about 200 million trees, which have mostly been reestablished naturally. While the effects of climate change could threaten the future of these trees, this method has also increased crop yields in villages. This model of letting trees grow back with little human influence could be implemented in other countries.