Advancing Reforestation for Climate, Biodiversity, Equity and Communities

retreat focus

Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, biodiversity loss, and degraded soils and water. Reforestation represents a critical opportunity to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, helping to cool our planet while also providing clean air, clean water, habitat for wildlife, and resilient rural communities. 

How can we ignite and strengthen reforestation initiatives and target high priority opportunities? What are the critical new finance models and policy frameworks?  How do we accelerate progress on private and public lands while ensuring multiple co-benefits for the climate, biodiversity, equity and local communities? 

The retreat will focus on two primary objectives:  1) building a network of deeply bonded and diverse reforestation leaders, representing a range of perspectives and programs;  and 2) advancing our collective understanding of the field, its threats, opportunities and a shared sense of what initiatives and key steps are essential in the coming few years. Together, we will assess opportunities for advancing reforestation predominantly in the United States.

Dominican Republic photo with Plant with Purpoase/Floresta.
Photography by Starboard and Port (Chase Heilman)

All photos on this page courtesy of the Arbor Day Foundation

Inspiration and Resources

2 billion trees over 10 years is one part of our commitment to nature-based climate solutions

A life on our planet

Accounting for albedo change to identify climate-positive tree cover restoration 

A century of reforestation helped keep the eastern US cool, study finds

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Breathing Life Into a Ghost Town: The Story of a Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross Gay 

Challenges to the Reforestation Pipeline in the United States, A great primer on the limits to the reforestation pipeline today. 

Climate and Forests 2030

Climate change: Planting new forests 'can do more harm than good'

Cross-cutting strategies with a current focus on three geographies

Crushed Wild Mint, Jess Housty

Design Justice is a great primer on co-design practices to dismantle structural inequality and discrimination.  While based on the tech world, the lessons are transferable.

Dispatches from Mother Trees, Suzanne Simard, Bioneers video

Embers,  Richard Wagamese

Emergence Magazine

Fermentation as Metaphor, Sandor Katz 

First Nations Carbon Toolkit

Forests Ontario 

Future Home of the Living God, Louise Erdrich

How Climate Action Can Reboot Economies in Rural America

How forests can cut carbon, restore ecosystems, and create jobs

How to Revive a Burned Forest? Rebuild the Tree Supply Chain

How We Became Human, Joy Harjo

IUCN's Restoration Report 2022 

Mapping where there planing has the great climate benefit

President Biden to Take Action to Uphold Commitment to Restore Balance on Public Lands and Waters, Invest in Clean Energy Future

Reinvesting in the Mississippi Delta: A new reforestation program pays landowners for the environmental benefits that come from restoring forests on their most flood-prone lands.

Speech by Tom Tidwell, Chief of USFS - Investing in the Restoration Economy

Strengthening Tribal Consultations and Nation-to-Nation Relationships

Systems Thinking and How It Can Help Build a Sustainable World

To Love the Wind and Rain - African Americans and Environmental History

The Bear, Andrew Krivak 

The Book of Delights, Ross Gay

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (book)

The Mother Tree Project at the University of British Columbia

The Overstory, Richard Powers

USDA Forest Service: National Forest System - Reforestation Strategy - Growing and Nurturing Resilient Forests

We are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer

Whitebark, Glacier NPS video