A Trillion Trees for Life
A few days ago, I had called home and was speaking to my Mother. She was talking about her recent trip to the countryside where our family owns a house with a backyard.
My parents had planted a few trees there, among them was a variety of Banana unknown to the western world but unbelievably tasty and a Mango tree. She was telling me how the Mango tree had borne about 500 fruits this year. In a mildly annoyed tone she was complaining that people were stealing the fruits since the branches of the tree protrude on to the street and was accessible to anyone on the street.
As she was narrating this I got exasperated and even slightly furious. I was about to suggest cutting down the branches that protruded on to the street to prevent access and raising the height of the compound wall, but, that is when I caught myself and slowed down to think.
After the call I spent some time reflecting on the issue — Who really owns the fruits? Is it the Tree or ‘we’?
We did not create the tree, neither did we create the Sun that gives it energy, the nutrients in the soil and the trillions of bacteria and insects and bees and butterflies that help it grow. All we did was to build walls and stake claims on what the trees produce.
Trees live in harmony with nature and their life-cycle is both sustainable and resilient. They convert nuclear fusion energy into chemical energy both for storage and consumption, i.e. Photosynthesis. All life in the animal kingdom lives off of this type of energy.
Closer still, if we consider the very breath we take in is a result of this process. Without photosynthesis, there is no reason for gaseous elemental Oxygen to exist in the atmosphere of any rocky planet, because over time, it reacts with various other elements and forms stabler Oxides.
Trees are benevolent , they offer what they create to every being, they do not differentiate between human demarcations like wealth, nationality, religion, race, gender etc. After all the Mango tree made the mangoes and did not stop anyone from accessing it.
The human cultural history is filled with references to trees. The Tree of Life in the garden of Eden reference in Abrahamic religions, the Kalpavruksha in Hindu beliefs, the Bodhi Tree in Buddhism.
I think across cultures there is a primordial feeling of love and reverence felt by all human beings to trees. I believe it was forged over millennia of living amongst them, after all it was our home, our sanctuary until the dawn of civilization.
There are at least two instances from India where such instinctive and deep love was displayed in recorded history.
One is the Chipko movement in 1970 in the norther Himalayan region of Garhwal. As a last resort, Women and children spontaneously and non-violently hugged the trees that were about to be felled by government backed loggers. They stood their guard against the weather and threats of violence from the loggers.
This act of resistance struck a chord with people across the region and the movement rapidly spread across the region. The movement was so strong that in spite of the economically deprived times that India was going through, the Indian government banned commercial logging in the region for a period of 15 years!!!
Another is the story of Jadav Payeng of Assam, India, popularly known as the Forest Man. In 1979 Jadav saw an unusual number of dead water snakes washed up on to the shores of the barren sandbar called Majuli in the Brahmaputra river.
He began planting trees as a way to restore the ecological balance. Over a period of 30 years, he single-handedly created a forest out of a barren sandbar. The forest, now named after him is over 1300 acres in area and is home to about a hundred elephants and other endangered species like the Bengal tiger, Rhinoceros, vultures etc.
It is to be noted that Jadav is no privileged hipster who takes part in social causes to boost one’s status on social media or even as a hobby. For him, it is a mission, a purpose in life. He does what he does despite crushing poverty that many in the developed world cannot even comprehend. He lives in a hut and would be considered living below the poverty line even by Indian standards.
Recently I came across an article that stated that planting a trillion trees can help reverse some of the environmental damage that is caused by human activity. I really hope that it becomes a global grassroots movement.
One way to incentivize people is to conduct nature retreats, where people can take a break from the glass and concrete spaces and spend time in a forest to reconnect with the primordial feeling of being home among the trees.
I believe this self-experience is more powerful than any amount of social-media posts. In fact the Japanese tradition of Shinrin Yoku — Forest Bath, encourages people to take a solitary pilgrimage or a walk through the forest to refresh and rejuvenate. Studies have shown that such an activity has health benefits.
Another incentive could be offering precision satellite based image tracking linked with carbon credit programs. Companies or individuals can opt-in to pay for trees to be planted and tended to in regions around the globe and in return obtain the economic rewards from carbon credits and also the social or emotional reward of a visual representation of their contributions.
In tropical countries there is no need for such incentives if one can grow fruit bearing trees. Since the trees are native to the region, they need very little tending. Planting fruit bearing trees in government owned land can become a public food basket. (I recollect enjoying fresh Jamun fruits in the parks around the Indian parliament building in New Delhi).
Even if the fruits are stolen and resold in the market the economic effects are still positive as the average price of fruits will come down making it affordable to even the poorest of the society.
As a thought experiment, I imagine planting fruit bearing trees along the highways of India(Not on the median but on the either sides, well away from the shoulder of the roads).
India has about 100,000 KMs of National highways. Assume we can plant a tree for every 50 meters along the highway. That amounts to 20 trees per kilometer on one side, or 40 trees per kilometer accounting for both sides of the highway.
This amounts to 4,000,000 trees in total! This is well short of the trillion trees campaign i.e. this represents about 0.00000004% of a trillion. The impact is not trivial though. Lets assume that the 4 Million trees are all mango trees. A conservative estimate for a mango yield is about 500 mangoes a season per tree.
That is about 2 Billion Mangoes!!! This is about 2 mangoes for every Man, Woman and Child in India.One can imagine the impact this can have if it is scaled even 1 or 2 orders of magnitude.
The problem of scaling is not very daunting, countries like Thailand have successfully implemented Aerial Seed bombing to plant trees over large swathes of deforested land. A few startups like droneseed now offer drone based planting and management of forests.
I have meandered through the topic of trees and other related topics of climate change, environmentalism, poverty, economics and ethics like walking through a forest of trees. This was not intentional but rather inevitable. Trees are so integrated into the cycle of life that it is hard to imagine a world without them, they impact every aspect of our existence.
Trees, like us, are the children of the earth but wiser, as they have learnt to live in harmony with the planet, we have a lot to learn from them. I believe it is our duty to take care of existing trees and grown new ones, more importantly, treating them with the reverence that we once had.
It should be Trees for life rather than Tree of life.
