Planting 73 million – largest reforestation project so far
Conservation International set out to achieve the goal of zero net deforestation in Amazonia to protect essential resources, mitigate climate change and increase prosperity of the local people.
They are currently working on a 30.000 hectares (70.000 acres). In the past decades more than 20% of the Amazonian rain-forest was cut down and the predictions are not good, with another 205 to disappear in the upcoming 20 years. It is a 6 year project that is carefully design to literally figure out how to do tropical restoration at scale, so it can be done at any scale and with lower costs that today.
They will be using a method for planting called muvuca, which means many people in a small place. The idea is to have hundreds of native tree seeds of various species spread over every inch of deforested land, so that natural selection can take over and the the most suited to survive and thrive will thrive.
The initial goal is to have around 2,500 species per hectare, that should have 5,000 trees per hectare after 10 years. More diversity, more density and lover costs are the aims of this new planting technique.
Let’s keep an open mind…
In 2011 Conservation International has been accused of corporate green-washing. Hopefully they learned their lessons, but it is something to keep in mind, how the dark side of the business and with that I mean multinational companies with blood on their hands, try to clean their images and sweep whatever it is under the rug. We have to find ways where the support for the global cleanup is not a pretended one, fueled by greed and corporate green-washing (because that is their shit that we have to deal with anyway), but a real compassion project of humanity. Progress can be messy and fuck ups a part of the journey, but we need to include the clean up part right away, to be able to safe our sorry asses from a dystopian future as portrayed in most Hollywood movies. Let’s make it harmonious.
https://theecologist.org/2011/may/11/conservation-international-agreed-greenwash-arms-company