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Strategy 11: Planting Trees

Another improvement essential to the sustainability of the environment is the planting of trees, both to relieve the global shortage of trees for lumber, pulpwood and firewood, important sources of energy and income for the developing world, and to reduce the effects of global warming.

With policy initiatives to stop deforestation and major tree-planting initiatives throughout the world, deforestation can be reversed, firewood shortages can be eliminated, and desertification and global warming can be partially checked. By planting 150 million hectares of trees over the course of a decade, mostly in small clusters on hillsides, near dwellings, around fields, and in high erosion-prone croplands, enough trees for sustaining ecological, fuelwood and wood products needs can be achieved.[112] Planted by local villagers, costs would be $400 per hectare, including seedling costs. The effort would leave sufficient numbers of trees available to meet the world's requirements for wood. In addition, global warming would be decelerated by the increased conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen by the new trees, and the stabilization of endangered soil and water regimes would be advanced. Desertification would be stopped, even reversed in many areas.

Costs/Benefits

An average of $6 billion per year for ten years could pay for the reforestation program.[113] An additional $1 billion per year would cover financial incentives and rainforest protection. The total cost of $7 billion per year for ten years is about 0.9% of the world's total annual military expenditures.

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