[music] I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Lauren Oakes.

She's author of the new book, Treekeepers, The Race for a Forested Future.

She is an author and scientist and conservationist.

Lauren, thank you for joining me today.

Yeah.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Lauren, what motivated you to write this book?

Well, the most to the point answer is that I was watching kind of as two camps emerged around 2019, 2020 before the pandemic hit.

And that were these people and a lot of media coverage on it saying trees are the climate solution.

And then there were lots of people and responses in the media saying this isn't the real solution, this is a distraction from the work we need to be doing.

And I continued to watch governments and companies ramp up their commitments to plant more trees.

And as an ecologist, a forest ecologist, someone who's spent my life studying the health of forests really around the planet, it really intrigued me.

And the momentum that restoration had moved from what has been done by people in communities and also environmentalists and cultures around the world for a long long time, but all of a sudden, that was in the corporate and policy eye in a different way.

And I really want to take a critical look at how can trees really save us?

And to what extent can they do that?

And your thesis coming out of the research on those two schools and with which one you agree more, did you have a clear answer?

[laughs] I think everybody wants a really sexy headline like, plant trees or don't plant trees.

And as you'll tell from the book, it's a lot more complicated than that.

But I do think as a general statement, which everybody wants, there's a lot of good work that can come from restoring forests.

And it's about how we do that work thats really important.

So it's not just planting a tree and what kind of tree, but thinking about where are we planting forests?

Where are we growing forests?

Where are we sustaining the forests that we already have that are providing an enormous amount of services, not just to the climate system, but to biodiversity or human health and well being.

And it's a complicated answer, but hopefully I take you on a good journey to a lot of different places to kind of answer all the nuances of that.

And I hope that this book inspires people to think about all that's involved in tree keeping, not just the act of planting a tree or putting a tree in the ground.

So, conserving some of those fantastic anecdotes and journeys around the world.

What was most edifying in the anecdotes that you convey that you're willing to share that is most profound in this this polemic, this discussion about tree planting?

Your argument is, yes, under the right circumstances.

But give us an inside look at what kind of viscerally you felt most connected to in telling the story in the regions that you chronicle.

Oh, wow.

I love that.

Viscerally what I felt most connected to, because I certainly go into the nitty gritties of the science and some of the data on what trees can sequester and what their real potential is in terms of sequestering carbon into the future.

Well, as you think about it, as you think about that question... Yeah.

I'm gonna give you one though.

Let me ask you this, because you refer to the pandemic, and I know this was also a journey with your son and family thinking about the virtue of nature and what it brings to our mental health.

But one of the most illuminating things during the early stage of the pandemic, when everything shut down, was just seeing the pace at which fossil fuels were being emitted was declining and there was a map basically showing the suspension of that type of activity that can be quite injurious to the environment.

And planting is supposed to be a renewal.

It's supposed to counter the waste and emissions that you saw on that map that disappeared for a bit.

And so I wondered, coming out of the pandemic, if you thought about it at all, like, restoring the equilibrium of our planet, you have emissions and waste as a result of corporate activities and just everyday people's activities.

This is an idea to be a kind of counterbalance to that.

Yeah, I think that's one of the big conclusions is that, first of all, it's not just the act of planting, but the act of restoring ecosystems and restoring our forests and a lot of different places around the world, including the urban landscape where we spend a lot of time and more people spend time than we do, and by sheer numbers, then some of the most remote intact pristine forests, but that it's about restoration.

And that restoration work is also a restoration of our own relationship to nature.

There's all kinds of benefits that come from time spent with trees on our ability to think clearly, on the extent to which we ruminate over things.

Spending time in nature has really proven benefits.

And you can see, you point to the pandemic, but sure, there was a drop in fossil fuel emissions during those early days.

And there was also more time people were spending outside, which has some real profound effect on on cultures around the world and will continue to.

But I think some of the things that really resonated, walking away.

I interviewed 150 people for this book, I did not go to see them all.

Coming out of the pandemic, many people were also really willing to meet virtually.

But about 30 to 40 of those I did travel to meet and go to some really interesting places.

And one of the things I think that's stuck with me is the passion and dedication and also the hope that's filled in this, that people put into this kind of work.

As someone who was trained traditionally as a forest ecologist came in as, I studied environmental studies at Brown and went to Stanford.

I'm an environmental scientist.

Seeing and meeting people from all sectors and across many different kinds of sectors with different skill sets even in tech world and startups, like really trying to think about how can we support a nature positive economy?

How can we support more forest cover and how do we make that economically viable to more people around the world, was really inspiring to me and is inspiring to me.

And even though there may be questions and problems with some of the projects that have been underway or have happened, I view this as a pathway to better.

Like, how do we make the world better than the current trajectory we're already on?

And forests will definitely have a role to play in that, not just creating new forests, but continuing to keep the ones that we have growing and keep them alive and thriving.

Along these same lines, can you provide a little bit more context?

You say there are many definitions of forest, and there's also a definition of something called tree equity that you elicit in your book emanating from your research.

So that might also spell out for you that question about what you feel most viscerally connected to.

But what are the definitions of forest that are relevant in this conversation?

And what is the idea of tree equity?

Yeah.

Great questions.

Surprisingly, there's about over 800 definitions of forest in the scientific literature.

And a lot of those are meant to quantify forests where they are.

Typically, they're theyre based on some kind of threshold of a tree height and a percentage of cover in an area.

And kind of the history of that is pretty fascinating, I think, because if you're gonna say what's the state of the world's forests, which is part of how the the book opens, you need to be able to quantify it and look consistently across the globe.

But the problem of that is it obviously leaves out many other... Well, first of all it doesn't capture, it can never capture all forests.

You can get a forest that is simply just below that threshold and is actually a forest or feels like a forest or seems to have the benefits of a forest, but doesn't get captured by that one threshold.

So no real definition is perfect in that sense.

But I think it's our effort to be able to quantify and look at both country levels and a global level of where forests are.

And just to give some real specifics that I brought from my experience over the years is being inside a forest in Suriname, for example, one of the most intact forests remaining in our world that has multi layered canopies and a diversity of species and rich soils from the organic matter that's really different than being inside a forest that is a plantation of all one species.

And not to say that that second one isn't a forest, but it's a different kind of forest.

So how does this relate to tree equity?

Well, one of the fascinating things I got to research in working on this book, as someone who has spent more time in remote forests, I felt like I was really overlooking a topic if I didn't take a deep dive into what the urban landscape is, what is the urban forest?

And so I got to spend some time in places that have relatively lower tree cover.

And you really see the benefits of forests and the presence of trees in an urban landscape with shade, sure, there's the aesthetic appeal, but there have been studies linking, for example, test scores of children, higher test scores to higher tree cover.

There's been studies showing people may heal faster in a hospital that has a view of nature or of trees.

So if you start to think about, regardless of whether that fits one tree or 10 trees in a certain block fits your definition of what a forest is, those trees are providing benefits.

And then if you start to look at well, where are they distributed and how are they distributed?

Then you start to think about tree as an equity issue, tree cover as an equity issue.

If all those benefits are linked to it, and there's many more that I haven't even mentioned.

I loved... gosh, there was some data I saw coming out of Portland and comparing two neighborhoods and there was a 20 degree Fahrenheit temperature difference between a well treeed, well canopied neighbor and a neighborhood without a lot of tree cover.

Those are really dramatic differences that affect people's daily lives in a warming world.

So tree equity is a movement in the United States.

And there's a new restoration law in the EU now to increase tree cover.

But to really look at how do we raise tree cover in some of these places that have had trees in the past and do not have them or do not have them to the extent that they could and to address those inequities.

When you first started using that term I wasn't sure if you were referring to access to trees or the right of the tree to exist.

Well, that's a whole other lens, the right of the tree to exist, but access is a huge issue.

I talked with doctors at the University of Washington, there's a wonderful doctor there Pooja Tandon, who has a new book out about nature contact.

And there's actually a movement in the American Pediatric Society to start allowing or helping doctors prescribe or even recommend time in nature to your well child visit.

So when you go in for your well child visit and you go through all the things that you normally do, including here's the number you call if your kid eats any poison but it's also how much time are you getting in nature?

Is there a park nearby?

But that obviously very very clearly brings up the question of access and then the inequitable distribution of that access throughout, particularly our urban areas as well.

So, let me ask you about public policy.

What did you learn would be the most effective and efficacious implementation of policy when it comes to protecting forests, protecting trees, protecting our environment?

Fundamentally, The Open Mind is about public policy and researchers, scholars, leaders like yourself telling us after methodical research, well, what's the most viable and successful policy outcome here and how can it be achieved?

When I asked that question before about what you feel viscerally, yes, I'm interested in what you felt in connecting with those 150 people that you interviewed, but I'm also interested in where do we go from here policy wise in the United States and globally what have been the most egregious violations of tree equity or the right of forests to exist in our environment to be protected, and what are the most high profile or unsung examples of, we should be doing our public policy more like this country or region?

Mm hmm.

Well, first in my mind I'm thinking about climate policy, but then also just environmental policy more broadly.

So I'm gonna start with the broader topic on nature.

And your question sparks to me, Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, brilliant book that put forward that climate change should and would best be solved by revolutionizing our economy.

And I think in the years that followed since then, and we're seeing more of a movement now, this idea of companies assessing their nature risk or thinking more about your supply chain and how do we account for nature in our day to day business and day to day industries.

I think while that is like a very broad level answer, the best way to account for nature is to finally stop treating it as an externality.

Like so much of the degradation has happened over the years because we weren't accounting for the services that nature provides.

This is the idea of natural capital, the idea of a nature positive economy, the idea that there are ecosystem services.

So instead of nature just existing for nature's sake, they are providing services that keep our society and our economy and everything about the way we live functioning.

What would that actually take?

Yeah, a revolution of some kind for sure in our policy world, but it would take a lot of companies and governments taking stock of their natural capital and the actions that they do and how those actions pose risk to them.

And there is a movement underway for sure, with many countries starting to do that and companies starting to do that as well.

So that's the nature one.

I would say specific to climate and forests, I think that the number one message that people should walk away with when they think about a trillion more trees in the planet is it's not just planting trees, but it's growing more trees.

It's sustaining the ones that we already have.

And then it is, yes, creating new forests, however you define that in a broad range of ways, and keeping them economically viable So people need to be able to support those trees into the future.

One of the things I thought was fascinating when I was learning about the urban forestry was that a lot of programs in our country will provide planting money for, you'll think of a little square on your sidewalk and you can go and pick up a grant or a tree fairly easily to plant there, and that comes from one pocket of money.

But the funding for caring for them or managing them is often, in many cases, not taken under by the government, it's taken under by the adjacent landowners.

One person I interviewed said, "What if we started thinking about trees as street lamps?"

You think of a street lamp as providing you safety in the urban setting or helping you as it is a standard protocol And we have funding to help maintain those.

What if the same were true for all our urban trees so that just the stewardship isn't landing on the unknown when you plant a tree.

You answered the first question with a caveat of, should we be planting?

Should we not be planting?

But isn't the answer to that more specifically based on the examples you identify in your book, like where it's appropriate to be doing this and where it might not -Sure.

-be appropriate to be doing this And where are some examples accordingly where it was appropriate in your judgment or if there are examples where the scope or scale didn't make sense to embark on such a project?

Well, I think the biggest thing any company or government needs to consider in making a target or a goal is where are those trees going?

Do the people living in that area want and need those trees?

Can they help sustain them?

And that here we are, I say we, but who is we?

And these lofty goals of a trillion trees, right?

But when it comes down to it, that means many, many, many efforts around the planet, millions of efforts around the planet that are supported by local people.

One of the things I talk about in the book is there are these things called, there are movements called historical forest transitions, where in the past, countries have gone from losing forest cover to gaining forest cover.

And there was a scholar from Scotland who did a lot of work on, in Europe, particularly what was causing those in the 1800's.

And one of the points today is that the movement we're seeing today is really different.

It's supported by more private sector investment and there's also a great sense of collective action.

And there are more government targets around the country, around the world.

Point being in that in the past, you would see policies, for example, that would that would spark reforestation particularly during World War I or World War II when countries were nervous about the amount of imports they were reliant on, they would start planting more forests.

And in this case, now what we're seeing in the last decade, and I think we'll continue to see in the future is such a diversity of people investing in forests, different diversity of sectors, and both what I would say is a top down and a bottom up movement.

So there are targets set by countries in terms of how many trees they want to grow or to plant or to protect, and then there are individuals taking collective action as part of NGOs and different organizations part of organizations in their communities.

So it's a different kind of movement than what we've seen in forest transitions that have occurred elsewhere.

I guess one of the questions I have in the book that I try to answer is, are we seeing a real global forest transition where we could possibly move from what has been a recent history of degradation to a new future of stewardship and increasing forest cover.

That's a hopeful notion.

Definitely.

And I think then again, there's the nuanced answer of what are we losing and what are we gaining?

What kind of forest are we still losing in places like in Brazil or in the Congo and some of the intact blocks we have remaining in the world where degradation is still occurring.

But I do think never before in human history have we seen what is now a a UN Decade on Restoration and I find that hopeful.

And the work won't be perfect.

There will be projects that fail and there have been projects that fail.

But I think a big thing moving forward will be learning and sharing what we're doing across the world, and improving upon that work.

How important is the type of trees that we're talking about?

-Yeah.

-In terms of saving these classes of trees or these species of trees versus others?

Does that factor into this?

There are about 100 or so species that people have most commonly planted around the world, and they tend to be species that we have used in timber.

But part of this movement and part of what I see as hopeful into the future is a greater interest in more diversity.

So, if you're planting a timber plantation, yes, that will sequester carbon.

Yes, it will provide wood and other benefits.

But can you look at what's called Five Star Restoration, what may be called Five Star Restoration, very high on a continuum of restorative activities.

And think about, how could we restore the diversity of species to support other life here?

And there are interesting examples around the world where people may be investing in carbon, yes, but they're also investing in the biodiversity benefits of a project, maybe even the water resources that come from creating and sustaining a forest, a diverse forest, and also the benefits to people's livelihoods.

So I think of those types of projects as some of the ones we can put of the highest quality because you're restoring an ecosystem function.

But... critics of that would say, "You can't do that everywhere."

Because, yes, we still need plantations and we still need wood coming from from timber plantations as well.

Did you find this to be an area of public policy where there is more camaraderie and more unity?

This does not seem to be a deeply polarizing or politicized issue in the way some other environmental or social issues are?

Or do you find that there are rabid opponents of tree planting who think that that it's an inhumane gesture to be planting trees ourselves?

God created the trees and they are where they are.

I think the rabid opponents have come in critiquing the carbon credit system or in critiquing kind of top town or like helicopter type efforts where you get someone coming in saying, These are the trees we should plant in this area.

And we're gonna take this landscape, we're gonna buy this landscape, and we're gonna transform it, as opposed to working with community and thinking about what do we want this land to be?

How can we sustain it?

How can the community continue to support it into the future?

But no, one of the things that I love about this topic, and I try to share this through stories with my son is that I fundamentally believe people have an innate appreciation for trees and nature and our lifestyles now in many places in parts of the world take us out of that.

So I do think the act of planting or caring for a tree is appealing because it's a restorative act, it slows us down, it allows us to engage in a way that as a species, as an animal, humans have been for thousands of years before this little snippet of window... That would be really interesting case study, Lauren, to have everybody go to their local town hall meeting or local city council and put forward a proposal for tree planting.

Like you said, not something that is inconsistent with the trees or the collective heritage of that community and see if it garnered controversy or if it was widely accepted as, "Oh, that's a reasonable thing to do."

Final question for you.

Is there anywhere in the world right now where a carbon credit, which you said is a source of controversy, or cap and trade type system, is working.

This was proposed in the early part of the Obama administration by Senator Markey and Congressman Waxman.

It got shelved.

It wasn't really even a viable from the get go.

Is there anywhere where cap and trade or carbon credit is working in the world?

I think the most common examples we point to are in California and in the EU which of course, in both systems, there are constant changes and revisions and trying to make the system better.

So is the system perfect anywhere?

No.

But I do think there are projects that are certifying carbon that are delivering and can deliver on carbon sequestration but also provide other benefits.

And one of the examples I gave, I went to a project in Panama, which I loved, it was just really amazing to see.

This was in an area where farmers had been relying on cattle and the cattle productivity had gone way down, so they needed to use the land in some other productive way.

They had a company, the company at the time was Microsoft.

They have since invested in the project.

They were considering investing at the time, really wanting to pay kind of top dollar for those carbon credits in the hopes and agreement that that project would do more.

And some of the other benefits I saw in the community coming from that work already was really pretty amazing.

So I guess, one of the main myths or that I've seen perpetuated in the media is there's constant hammering of forest carbon credits and critiquing their efficacy.

And I guess, I don't even know if myth is the right word, but maybe a misperception that forest protection, when you put a carbon credit on it, is the same as reforestation.

So a lot of times there's been a number of studies looking at projects that credited a standing forest, what's called a REDD+ project or avoided deforestation, basically saying, "We're going to pay you to keep those trees there.” And then you see leakage pop up around the area.

So you'll see a standing forest protected, and you'll see increased pressure of land use on the surrounding.

Well, some people I interviewed would say, "Well, that shows it's actually being quite effective.

We did protect the standing forest there."

And it's pretty hard to say, was there changes in land use or due to that, or was it just increased land pressure from other mechanisms that are obviously happening.

Lauren, we're out of time.

-Thank you for it all -Oh, no.

Thank you so much for your insight today.

And I encourage all of our viewers and listeners to pick up Treekeepers.

Lauren Oakes, thank you for your insight.

All right.

Thanks for having me.

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