While Ameen Taylor is glad he has a cool stand of trees in the front and back yards of his Detroit home, he knows it’s different for many residents in his hometown, where neighborhoods often have little or no shade.
“For me, 70 degrees is nice weather, but if you go somewhere or are in a neighborhood that doesn’t have trees, it feels like it’s 87 to 90 degrees. That’s what it feels like,” Taylor said. “One is more exposed to the sun than to the shade.”
Like many cities in the US, parts of Detroit have large amounts of impervious surfaces and heat-absorbing infrastructure such as roads and bridges. Coupled with little cooling tree cover or canopy, it can get dangerously hotter than the suburbs.
Such disparity in tree cover is the reason for the historic $1.5 billion in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act earmarked for the federal forest service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program to fund tree planting projects over the next decade. The initiative focuses on underserved communities and represents a huge increase over the approximately $36 million paid out to the program annually. Another millions for tree projects are also available from Biden’s infrastructure bill and COVID-19 relief funds.
Urban forestry advocates, who have debated the benefits of trees in cities for years, see this moment as an opportunity to transform underserved neighborhoods that struggle with dirtier air, dangerously high temperatures and other challenges from not having a canopy overhead. Advocates also believe this will mark the start of a long-term financial commitment to trees, especially given scientists’ dire warnings about global warming.
“City trees don’t just have a moment. In many ways, this is more than just a moment in the sun. This is the new normal, I think,” said Dan Lambe, executive director of the Arbor Day Foundation. Lambe said the massive federal investment recognizes that trees are essential to communities, “not just a nice thing, they’re a must.”
Trees help absorb heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing erosion and flooding. They’re also credited with helping save lives, considering heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed spending $500,000 from the remaining COVID-19 relief funds, money he hopes to match with the new federal funds to fund plantings in underserved neighborhoods.
“I just drive across the state, I drive through Hartford, I see places where — imagine if we only had 30 trees on this empty lot — what that means for clean air, what it means for beauty, what it means for shade,” the Democrat said, referring to the Connecticut capital, which only has a quarter of its 11,490 acres tree canopy.
Historically, cities like Hartford, where banks denied or avoided lending altogether because of race, are up to 13 degrees hotter than neighborhoods that don’t fall under the red lines, said Lauren Marshall, senior manager of program innovation at the Arbor Day Foundation. With limited access to nature, many residents of these communities have not had a chance to escape the heat and social distancing outside to a cooler, shady area during the pandemic, she said.
“I remember the summer of 2020 when we spent a lot of time outdoors because it was the only way we could see the people we loved. And I live in an area with a lot of tree canopies,” she said. “And for a lot of people, that wasn’t the case.”
Marshall said the pandemic, coupled with the racial infighting sparked by the killing of George Floyd, has drawn much attention to the issue of canopy inequality. Many cities and communities are now using a tree equity score analyzer developed by American Forests to target tree planting in the neediest neighborhoods.
“In all states, and in our state, we have been underinvested overall in our urban canopy,” said Hilary Franz, Washington’s public lands commissioner. Seattle will plant 8,000 trees on public and private land and 40,000 in parks and natural areas over a five-year period, an initiative partially funded by federal funds.
Seattle also plans to require three trees to be planted for every healthy, site-appropriate tree removed from city lands.
Some communities plan to use federal funds for tree care and building a tree care workforce, particularly in locations where workers face hurdles to employment, such as criminal records. Joel Pannell, vice president of urban forest policy at American Forests, said the current tree care labor pool in the country is aging and needs more workers. It is also overwhelmingly dominated by white males.
“As people retire and retire, there is a tremendous need to hire a new cadre of people to represent the communities where the work needs to get done,” he said.
Detroit native Taylor is one of 300 workers who will plant 75,000 trees in the Motor City over the next five years. On Wednesday, he helped plant a dozen maple trees, carefully digging the holes by hand to avoid underground plumbing. Taylor, who was formerly incarcerated, is proud of the work he is doing.
“Without trees, it just looks empty,” he said.
Planting trees in urban areas is nothing new. In 2007, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a successful campaign to plant 1 million trees. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa embarked on a similar drive to plant one million trees by the end of his first term in 2009, but many died because they had to be planted on private property, where residents are largely responsible for watering and tending.
The cost of Biden’s tree-planting program has met with political opposition from lawmakers, who likened it to spending on pork barrels.
US Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida last year criticized the Inflation Reduction Act for saying it “had nothing to do with what people really care about in the real world,” citing tree planting as an example.
“That’s good,” he said sarcastically. “A lot of people are worried about this: $1.5 billion to plant more trees. What ever.”
Lora Martens, urban tree program manager at Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, acknowledged that the amount of money available is “kind of wild.” However, she predicted it will have a “significant impact” on Phoenix – which is said to be the hottest major city in the US – and the surrounding metropolitan area. Last summer was the heat-related summer with the highest number of deaths on record in Arizona’s largest county.
Phoenix hopes to expand its shadowy, mile-long Cool Corridor trails; Initiate more tree plantings in neighborhoods on private property. preserve the city’s “city forest” in the long term; and work with other communities and the state tree nursery association to address the tree care skills shortage.
Martens said a key goal is to also nearly double the tree canopy in the city’s underserved neighborhoods.
Brittany Peake knows firsthand how trees can transform a neighborhood. The three-bedroom home she bought in Greer, South Carolina as part of an affordable housing program had no trees on the property, a former trailer park.
The non-profit organization TreesUpstate asked Peake last year if she would like to get involved in their free tree planting program. Five trees are now planted on their property, including a swamp white oak that has already reached a height of two meters. Peake said she’s looking forward to seeing the birds nesting in the tree and expects at least one of her four children to eventually climb the branches.
“My husband told me he actually climbed some oak trees when he was a kid,” she said. “I’m sure my third son will become a climber like his father.”
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Associated Press writers Mike Householder of Detroit and Manuel Valdes of Seattle contributed to this report.
fortune.com
https://fortune.com/2023/04/21/joe-biden-inflation-reduction-act-trees-cities-urban-1-5-billion/
