Trees: Easy parts first

First, let’s tackle as many easy parts as possible. Let’s replant as many mangrove swamps on the edge of oceans as we possibly can. No new beach developments. We need the swamps to protect against hurricanes anyway. Mangroves are absolute rock stars at sequestering carbon https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/04/04/3181798.htm, https://blog.nature.org/science/2013/10/11/new-science-mangrove-forests-carbon-store-map/, & https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12060 and should be protected. If we want to enjoy and explore them, there are a number of options including boating (in some areas) and building elevated walkways and maybe even zip lines in others (obviously wear mosquito netting so you don’t get bitten). Tree houses with partial glass floors to watch the water below like they have in the Maldives would be fun as well.

I think we could even create brand new mangrove swamps. Over a decade ago several cities began dropping old subway cars in the ocean to serve as a basis for coral reefs. The project has been amazingly successful and the results are beautiful! https://www.6sqft.com/photo-exhibit-shows-10-years-of-subway-cars-dropped-in-the-atlantic-ocean-to-become-artificial-reefs/

We should be able to do something similar with mangroves, using hempcrete building blocks to create new “land” islands on the edges of existing mangrove swamps.

Let’s say we add an even 2 million acres of mangrove swamps to the world. They won’t even need watering, so it’s very win-win. 3,151,289,616‬ acres to go.

Next, let’s plant the majority of new trees in areas with plenty of rain, so that we only have to water them for the first year or so. In a lot of the tropical rainforests, we just need to drive off the farmers and ranchers and miners and the jungle will take over again almost before you can blink. You could speed it up by dropping a bundle of seeds every half mile or so, though. The new growth will absorb carbon much faster than the old growth does, also. Ongoing monitoring, using both locals and outsiders, could be performed using drones, satellite images, remote cameras, and armed patrols, as well as partnerships with native tribes, who have a vested interest in protecting their territories.

South American countries have a history of valuing their natural resources and wanting to protect them. Corruption, aided and abetted by outside forces wanting jewels, oil, rubber, and lumber, as well as farmers wanting to plant vast tracts of soybeans and palm oil palms now, are the main enemies of the rainforest. Tourism has helped somewhat. The transition to mass transit will help a great deal, as oil demand will plummet and it will no longer be profitable to drive many new wells.

Lumber can be harvested sustainably. Finally, if every region is transitioning to more localized agriculture, there will be no more demand for growing soybeans in the rainforest.

Rainforests currently cover 2% of the world’s surface (5 billion out of 126 billion acres) but used to cover https://www.rainforestmaker.org/facts.html 14%, or 18 billion. Let’s say we do minimal planting, mostly just protection in the form of policing against intruders and agriculture. This would require a concerted effort to increase jobs and income for locals as well, similar to efforts to decrease poaching in Africa. We mostly stand back and let about 2 billion acres of tropical rainforest do what comes naturally and swarm back to life.

Now we only have 1,151,289,616‬ acres to go.