Seedballs Aiding Kenya's Reforestation Efforts

Plant Your Future is working with Peruvian farmers to reforest the Amazon rainforest by helping them earn an income while growing trees instead of doing so by cutting trees down. The charity does outreach, teaches farmers about agroforestry, intercropping, and the carbon market, and then supports them throughout the transition to those practices.

Auroville is home to foresters, ecologists, and other conservation advocates working on various reforestation efforts like propagating tropical dry evergreen forest species and planting drought-resistant species. Today, community-run nurseries supply about 50,000 saplings a year for tree-planting projects in Auroville. There are also “forest groups” made up of local residents who plant native species, collectively planting more than half a million evergreen saplings of over 200 different species.

A reforestation project in Brazil is using revenue from timber production to finance restoration costs by growing eucalyptus trees to cut down alongside the native plants they are cultivating.

Farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) allows local farmers who faced devastation to their crops due to drought to bring their land back to life and aid in reforestation. Over 20 years, the project has regenerated 200 million trees, improved crop yields by 30% and the concept of FMNR is practiced in 29 countries around the world.

The Miyawaki method of planting miniature natural forests in cities as a way to reduce air pollution and cool down temperatures is gaining ground throughout the world. The process involves planting a variety of trees in a particular way that allows for them to grow rapidly. While this method is very labor intensive and can be difficult to scale, there are more than 1,500 of these types of forests in Japan, India, and Pakistan.

A Spanish chef piloted a project to start a “marine garden” — cultivating eelgrass and obtaining grains it produces to be used in different recipes. The grain has healthy benefits, including 50 percent more protein than rice, and growing the seagrass can transform salt marshes into biodiverse ecosystems that can also capture carbon emissions. They are working to scale the project to understand the ideal conditions to grow the plants.

After a fungus has nearly wiped out the whitebark pine species in North America, scientists and conservationists are coming together to restore the species. The trees offer food to various animal species and are important to drinking and agricultural water supplies. A pilot project in Montana has planted up to 125 acres each year of whitebark pines, but the restoration process is expensive and time consuming. By combining traditional seed collecting efforts with gene sequencing, scientists hope to make these trees resistant to the fungus.

More golf courses are closing than are opening, allowing the rare opportunity to have open space in an urban environment. Restorations are becoming popular to allow wildlife and humans to make use of the natural space through the encouragement of different animals and plants to inhabit the same area as well as the development of parks and bike paths to foster human use.

As a response to a growing population, farmers have begun encroaching into Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to expand their crop yield. This creates a problem for the endangered great apes that live there, however, as it depletes their food, water and shelter resources. One non-profit is trying to change this landscape by improving farming practices with new seed varieties.

Ecosia, a nonprofit search engine that uses its profits to support tree-planting initiatives, is working with the Jane Goodall Institute Austria to grow 200,000 trees in Uganda. The organizations work with communities to design the projects around their needs and then support locals through the process of growing trees.