Together with our local project partner Trees4Moz in Mozambique, we’re working to change that — one tree at a time.

Why Reforestation Matters Now

The late conservationist David Shepherd once wrote that wildlife had only 2% of the Earth left to itself. That was 50 years ago. Today, the urgency has only grown.

Forests like Nhamacoa are home to countless species — not only animals, but trees that offer food, shelter, medicine, and identity to rural communities. The loss of this biodiversity affects everyone.

45,000 Indigenous Trees and Counting

Since launching, the local Trees4Moz team and partners have grown more than 45,000 trees, with over 20,000 trees funded by generous donors and organisations. A further 1,000 trees have been donated to the local environmental department, and 200 to the Nhamacoa school, supporting education and environmental awareness.

We also provide seedlings to local families and farmers who want to restore their land — making this a truly community-led movement.

From Forest Floor to Classroom: Seeds and Stories

Seed collection begins with the forest — and with children. Local kids bring us small bags of seeds they’ve gathered, which we buy to support their school expenses. Often it’s the smallest child (usually a girl!) who negotiates the best price — a charming and hopeful reminder of what this work is really about.

Among the species we grow are:

• Chanfuta (Afzelia quanzensis)
• Panga Panga (Millettia stuhlmannii)
• Pau Ferro (Swartzia madagascariensis)
• Muvuve (Kigelia africana)

These are not just trees — they are part of local healing traditions, sources of sustainable materials, and shelters for bees, birds, and primates.

Wildlife Returns: Even the Monkeys

Some trees, like kapok, attract bees and birds — but recently also Samango monkeys, who nibble the flower buds before they bloom. Thankfully, with a new donation of kapok seeds from Allan Schwarz of Mezimbite, we’ll be planting more — and learning to share the harvest.

Help Us Grow

With your continued support, we’re not only replanting a forest — we’re reviving an ecosystem, empowering children, and building a future where wildlife and people can thrive together.

The post Restoring Forests, Securing Futures: Rewilding Nhamacoa in Mozambique appeared first on African Conservation Foundation.

This is a potential threat to drylands, grasslands, savannas and the rangelands they support.

Large areas targeted for forest restoration in Africa, Asia and South America are covered by savanna and grassland. These open ecosystems are incorrectly mapped as degraded forest in the publicly accessible Atlas of Forest and Landscape Restoration Opportunities.

They are in fact ancient, productive and biodiverse and support millions of livelihoods. They also provide many important ecosystem services, which would be lost if converted to forests.

Savanna and grassland store up to a third of the world’s carbon in its soils. They keep streams flowing, recharge groundwater, and provide grazing for livestock and wildlife.

Grasslands can store carbon reliably under increasingly hot and dry climates. The same conditions make forests vulnerable to die-back and wildfires. Restoring grasslands is also relatively cheap and has the highest benefit-to-cost ratio of all the world’s biomes.

Instead of providing guidance on how to restore healthy grasslands and savannas, documents guiding forest landscape restoration focus entirely on increasing tree cover. Rangelands and grassy biomes are barely mentioned on the websites of the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration, the Bonn Challenge and AFR100.

A recent review of forest landscape restoration projects in Africa found no examples of grassland restoration. Projects instead focused on afforestation – planting trees where they didn’t previously occur – regardless of vegetation type. This threatens the biodiversity of grasslands and savannas, which is rapidly lost under dense tree cover and is slow and difficult to restore.

Forest targets that aren’t based on science

Meeting the international targets for forest restoration requires large-scale afforestation. Nearly half the land pledged for forest restoration is earmarked for plantations, mostly of fast-growing exotic species. These provide a fraction of the ecosystem services of the natural vegetation they replace. And they store 40 times less carbon than naturally regenerating forests.

Forest restoration initiatives tend to be driven by targets, with little regard for local ecological context. This commitment to fixed areas of forest cover encourages tree plantations in ecologically inappropriate sites and conditions.

For example, Malawi has reportedly pledged 4.5 million hectares to forest restoration. This is over a third of the country’s total area. Planting trees and restoring community woodlots, plantations and riverbanks is presented as addressing food and water insecurity and restoring biodiversity. Yet studies have shown that Malawi’s vegetation has been mostly savanna and grasslands for thousands of years.

The National Mission for a Green India aims to put a third of the country’s area under forest cover, no matter what natural vegetation existed originally. Large areas of natural grassland-forest mosaics have been replaced with commercial plantations. In many areas these species have become invasive and difficult to control.

Why does forest restoration continue to ignore the local ecological context? What is the science that underpins these massive schemes?

The colonial roots of tree planting

Historical research shows that the fascination with tree-planting has its origins in colonial forestry. This in turn was rooted in the centuries-old (and now disproven) theory that forests bring rain and deforestation cause areas to dry up. The colonial forestry approach was to plant trees to make up for deforestation caused by local people. The latter often lost control over their land in the process.

Initially applied in Algeria, this approach was adopted throughout Francophone Africa, Madagascar, and eventually also the British colonies in East Africa and India. Since historical forest cover of Europe was estimated at roughly one-third, this became the target in other places too.

This led to over two centuries of planting forests as a solution for a variety of ills, including drought, warming temperatures, soil erosion and lost biodiversity. It’s remarkable how today’s science-policy platforms continue this narrative.

Promoting appropriate solutions

Forest landscape restoration has become a powerful instrument for guiding global efforts and funding. Its proponents have a responsibility to ensure that the framework is scientifically sound. Rather than setting ambitious but ecologically flawed targets for planting trees, landscape restoration should be appropriate for local social and ecological contexts.

No amount of ecosystem restoration will solve the climate crisis if its underlying causes are not addressed. The clearing of forests and other ecosystems for commodity agriculture and timber urgently needs to be regulated. Emissions from burning fossil fuels need to be drastically reduced.

Rather than targeting developing – and rapidly urbanising – countries for afforestation, incentives should aim to reduce fossil fuel emissions, convert to renewable energy and build energy-saving infrastructure.

Susanne Vetter, Associate Professor in Plant Ecology, Rhodes University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post The long shadow of colonial forestry is a threat to savannas and grasslands appeared first on African Conservation Foundation.

The growing interest in this area means it is more important now than ever before to consider effective tree planting that benefits communities and the environment.

To do this, the right tree must be planted in the right place for the right purpose.

But there are many misconceptions that need to be addressed before the “right” conditions for successful tree planting are met.

“Breaking down the misconceptions about tree planting ensures we do not invest in actions that cause further damage to people and the planet, only to realize these problems after the damage is already done,” says Susan Chomba, a World Agroforestry (ICRAF) scientist, who will speak at the upcoming Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Tree Planting digital forum on September 29.

She will be joined by Manuel Guariguata, principal scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR); Ramni Jamnadass, co-leader of the Tree Productivity and Diversity unit at ICRAF; and Cora van Oosten, a senior project leader on landscapes, restoration, governance at Wageningen University.

Ahead of the event, the scientists address seven key misconceptions about tree planting and highlight more productive ways of managing these initiatives.

Misconception 1: Any seed is a good seed. Seed quality and sourcing is essential for tree planting success. Tree species are composed of many populations that can be wildly divergent with respect to their preference for the “right place.” Also, some seed sources may have a very narrow range of genetic diversity. One example is Grevillea robusta in East Africa. This tree was originally introduced from Australia, and today millions of these trees are now growing on small farms from Kenya to Rwanda. The entire population of trees all have a small handful of common ancestors and grow perhaps half as fast as they could do had they been from a good seed source with more genetic diversity.

Misconception 2: Once the trees are planted, the job is done. It is important to move beyond tree planting to tree growing. Tree growing means looking at trees as an investment requiring management, protection and realized returns on that investment. A focus on growing trees for the long-term can be particularly beneficial to smallholder farmers who stand to gain the most from realized returns in the form of marketable tree products and ecosystem services. Without this long-term focus, projects risk very low survival rates for seedlings, and wasted resources in the long term.

Misconception 3: All trees are easy to grow. A fundamental misconception is that any tree species can be planted anywhere and will grow easily. Although some smallholder farmers plant native food trees in agroforestry systems to help conserve them and ensure food security, this is not always an effective approach. Many native species are still wild or only partially domesticated, which means they are also under-researched and that optimum methodologies for farming them have not been developed yet. This can lead to major challenges with germination, propagation and management.

Misconception 4: Planting any tree anywhere is better than not planting a tree at all. Ecological niches such as grasslands exist, and these should not be replaced with trees. A diversity of Indigenous trees is also far more likely to restore and support biodiversity than monoculture plantations or plantations with a few species. There are also several niches on farms where farmers can cultivate trees for different uses, including soil fertility enhancement (through nitrogen fixing trees), food and nutritional benefits (e.g. fruit trees) and timber and energy, among other things.

Misconception 5: Tree planting is a top-down process. A common misconception is that successful tree planting initiatives should treat community members like employees who take orders from the top. Many people think that once funding from a big donor is secured, the planting project can simply pay farmers to collect seed, pay them to establish project nurseries and pay them to plant seedlings. That approach disregards the need for small-scale tree planters to have ownership and agency over planting that happens on their land. A sustainable process would ensure that knowledge is the basis for participation. Through capacity development community members can learn more about what a quality tree is; they should know how to source good seeds and seedlings; they should be informed about how they can improve their livelihoods through the trees they’re helping to plant.

Misconception 6: Tree planting is the only way to restore degraded land. The truth is that tree planting is just one of the tools in a well-stocked toolbox of practices. In fact, there are contexts where massive tree planting is a less favorable restoration technique, such as in arid and semi-arid areas where natural regeneration techniques can sometimes offer more effective and cost-efficient options. In arid and semi-arid areas, adding soil, water and livestock management practices increases the chances of success for both tree planting and natural regeneration.

Misconception 7: Climate change, biodiversity loss and food security can be addressed just by planting trees. These are complex challenges that require looking at both the causes (e.g. what is increasing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions) and the context-specific solutions for each. Natural regeneration, as well as efficient farming and livestock management should also be considered as methods of addressing environmental objectives.  Supporting community-led initiatives, valuing their products and services, and appreciating their efforts through institutional, technical and financial support is more effective than a single-purpose tree plantation.

Source: Forests News
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The post Dispelling the top seven tree planting misconceptions appeared first on African Conservation Foundation.

Trees are good. Trees are green. Trees suck up carbon dioxide. Ergo: plant as many trees as possible and you solve the world’s environmental and climate change challenges almost overnight. Right?

Not at all, say a growing number of bewildered African ecologists. They worry that Global North-led mass tree planting projects will do very little to contain ballooning emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-warming gases – and are more likely to ignite conflict over land tenure, food security, conservation and dwindling water resources for generations to come.

That US President Donald Trump has lent his support to mass tree planting rather than to the Paris Climate Agreement may also speak volumes.

At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos earlier this year, Trump signed up to the one trillion tree planting initiative, declaring: “We’re committed to conserving the majesty of God’s creation and the natural beauty of our world.” He avoided any reference to climate change.

Marc Benioff, CEO of the cloud-based software company Salesforce, also pledged to plant 100 million trees, remarking: “Who’s against the trees? Everyone’s for the trees. Trees are a bipartisan issue. I haven’t met any anti-tree people yet.”

Seed bombs

Closer to home, Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula also seems to think that trees-for-carbon plans are a great idea, so much so that she has challenged armies across the world to plant at least 75 million trees over the next year to slow global warming.

Soldiers may not even have to dig any holes, as the South African air force and army could simply bomb the country with “seed balls” (tree seeds encased in a tiny ball of fertile soil and clay).

Karishma Rajoo of the Durban-based Global Peace organisation, which is helping to spearhead the campaign, suggests that after crashing down to ground, the seed balls will take root and blossom when good rains arrive.

But several scientists across the world have voiced dismay over “quick-fix” global campaigns to cover the Earth with more carbon-absorbing trees – rather than taking firm action to chop the fossil fuel emissions that heat up the world.

Critics include William Bond, one of the country’s best-known ecologists and former chief scientist of the South African Environmental Observation Network. Speaking at the recent Savanna Science Network meeting at Skukuza in the Kruger National Park, Bond and three fellow scientists presented a sobering critique of global tree-planting campaigns to reduce atmospheric carbon.

Bond and his colleagues – Guy Midgley and Nicola Stevens of Stellenbosch University’s department of zoology and botany, and Caroline Lehmann of the University of Edinburgh and the University of the Witwatersrand – outlined just how much land in Africa has been targeted for afforestation schemes.

The Bonn Challenge – an initiative led by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the German government – aims to restore forests over 3.5 million square kilometres globally by 2030. This includes about 1 million square kilometres in Africa under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) scheme, financed by the World Bank and other donors.

To put these figures into perspective, Bond and his colleagues say that the 2030 global target covers a land mass the size of Europe’s 10 largest countries, about 45% of Australia or about 36% of the USA.

So far, 29 African nations have signed up to the AFR100 scheme, with South Africa pledging to “restore” 3.6 million hectares of degraded land. Kenya committed to restoring 5.1 million hectares. Cameroon has pledged to allocate nearly a quarter of the country to tree plantations, Nigeria about 32% and Burundi hopes to reforest a whopping 72% of its land.

Bond and his colleagues stress that they have nothing against trees per se. In fact, they strongly endorse tree planting to restore closed forests, the retention of remaining intact forests and the planting of trees in urban areas for shade and enjoyment.

Misreading African biomes

However, writing in the science journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, they argue that several mass tree planting campaigns are based on “wrong assumptions” and simply distract global attention from the tougher business of decarbonising the world at source.

From an ecological perspective, they note that Africa is the world’s grassiest continent, supporting pastoral communities and large remaining herds of grass-dependent and sunlight-loving wildlife species.

“The tree-planting plans ignore the fate of the savanna’s current inhabitants. And they bring the risk of raging megafires as well as adversely altering stream flows. By fixing set targets by a set period, they are forcing rapid land-use change on a massive scale. It is surely time to pause and ask questions of tree planting and its consequences,” Bond suggests.

Some maps prepared in support of mass tree planting “erroneously assume that low tree cover, in climates that can support forests are ‘deforested’ and ‘degraded’. The bizarre result is that ancient savannas – including the Serengeti and Kruger National Park – are mapped as deforested and degraded (because tree cover is reduced by elephants, antelope and millions of years of grass-fuelled fires)”.

This “profound misreading of Africa’s grassy biomes” had given rise to schemes such as the Bonn Challenge and AFR100, with financial pledges of more than a billion US dollars over the next 10 years.

“Committing such vast areas to plantations for the next century should raise many questions. An obvious one for industrial countries that are funding these projects is whether afforestation (planting new trees, rather than restoring areas known, historically, to have been closed forests) will work to cool the climate,” they say, citing several scientific reports that suggest that tree planting cannot sequester carbon at the scale needed.

Bond and his colleagues say carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is currently increasing at about 4.7 gigatonnes of carbon per year but the sums committed to tree planting amount to a small fraction of the funds needed.

“Either the funders are short changing African participants, or they do not see afforestation as a serious contributor to carbon dioxide reduction.”

Tree planting was also very land hungry – requiring between 14 million and 47 million square kilometres of tree plantations to sequester the current carbon growth rates.

“For optimistic estimates, you would need to afforest an area 53% larger than the USA or 85% of Russia. For less productive plantations, you would need upwards of one-third of the world’s land area.”

Even if Africa achieved the 100 million hectare target, current carbon growth rates would be mitigated by a mere 2.7% per year.

“If this seems very small reward for afforesting a continent, consider that the coal that drove 200 years of the industrial revolution took 400 million years to accumulate. How can we possibly expect to grow enough trees to stuff all the carbon back in again in just a few decades?”

Issues of land and water

They suggest that in the rush to launch AFR100, there had been too little time spent on exploring the social, economic and ecological costs of converting Africa’s grasslands and savannas to plantations.

“The global scale of tree planting promoted by AFR100 and similar programmes ignores local concerns over land tenure, competition with agriculture and conservation, and imposes this single dominant land use for generations to come. In trading water for carbon, it has been repeatedly shown … that replacing native grasslands with plantations reduces streamflow.”

This reduction of water flow in rivers would create critical impacts on dry-season water supply for local communities already facing water scarcity.

“Far from being deforested and degraded, Africa’s savannas and grasslands existed, alongside forests, for millions of years before humans began felling forests. A better way of supporting Africa’s transition to a future warmer world might be to promote energy-efficient cities in this rapidly urbanising continent so that Africa follows a less carbon-intensive trajectory of development than other emerging economies,” they conclude.

Drivers of the AFR100 plan, however, disagree with suggestions that the reforestation project is simply about planting more trees, as the project also included work to reverse soil erosion and desertification and to restore river catchments.

“Successful forest and landscape restoration is forward-looking and dynamic, focusing on strengthening the resilience of landscapes and creating future options to adjust and further optimise ecosystem goods and services as societal needs change or new challenges arise,” according to the AFR100 website.

The AFR100 secretariat suggests the initiative will attempt to create a mosaic of land uses by establishing new projects on agricultural land, either through new planting or natural regeneration.

According to the World Resources Institute, vast forest areas have been cleared over recent centuries as agriculture has spread and human populations have grown.

“About 30 percent of global forest cover has been completely cleared and a further 20 percent has been degraded.”

The institute says a project to map restoration opportunities had indicated that more than two billion hectares worldwide offered opportunities for restoration – an area larger than South America.

The institute says restoration should complement and enhance food production and not cause natural forests to be converted into plantations, but University of the Free State mountain vegetation and climate-change researcher João Vidal remains sceptical about the benefits.

“This whole idea [of planting more trees across the world] gives me goosebumps. It has a northern hemisphere bias. These people don’t know what they are saying. It does not make sense,” he told researchers at the annual Conservation Symposium in KwaZulu-Natal in November.

The Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries has not responded to email queries on the current state of implementation of the AFR100 project in South Africa, nor whether the original proposals are being revised.

By: Tony Carnie
Read the original article on New Frame.

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