| UNEP Billion Tree Campaign Composant1 #3783 The United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign invites individuals and orgranisations to enter tree planting pledges online with the objective of planting at least one billion trees worldwide in 2007. |
More details about the campaign and the latest figures on the numbers of trees planted (which have far exceeded the billion tree target) can be found here. 
Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, introduced the Campaign as follows: "We have but a short time to avert damaging and economically debilitating climate change. We also have all the economic, intellectual and technological know-how to head off this calamity and avoid the disruption and misery that inaction would entail.
The solutions are numerous and, as many economists say, affordable when compared with the costs of complacency. These range from energy saving measures and clean and renewable energy sources, to more efficient transport and better planning and management of our economies. We also know that the way we harvest natural resources has a big part to play. In this respect, the way we utilise and sustainably manage our forests can take a central and pivotal role.
Historically, forests have all too often been viewed simply as abundant sources of timber for activities like construction, ship building or fuel. However, the wider importance of these ecosystems is now increasingly understood. Reports such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment make clear that the goods and services provided by forests are worth billions if not trillions of dollars to the global economy. They range from goods and services linked with water supplies, with stabilization of soils, with purifying the air we breathe, with sustaining biodiversity, and with tourism, to providing genetic resources and natural medicines. Forests are also natural and economically important ‘sinks’, sequestrating carbon from the atmosphere and locking it away in trunks and branches.
Economics cannot capture all the benefits forests provide — from the beauty and spiritual value of the old and cherished village tree, the much-loved and productive community woodland, to the vast monumental and mystical tropical rainforest. But we know these are important too.
Globally, forest cover is at least one-third less than what it once was. It is time to reverse the trends, it is time to act.
Sustainably managing ancient and old-growth forests and avoiding deforestation must be our watchwords. Old growth and pristine forests are the natural world’s equivalents of the human world’s great edifices, sculptures and old masters. However, it is also in our wider interests to restore, reforest and recapture the lost and degraded forest and woodland ecosystems that have, all too often, fallen to short-term and narrow economic interests.
The Kyoto Protocol and its flexible mechanisms, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, provide formal, legally binding ways of achieving some of these wider forest and climate-related goals. UNEP fully supports them. However, voluntary initiatives also offer an important focus for our mutual and even broader environmental, economic and social concerns, alongside a way of ensuring that the coming years achieve a decisive victory in the fight against climate change.
The Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign is an engine for these voluntary expressions of solidarity. It is inclusive and is open to everyone — from governments and businesses, to community groups and individuals. The Billion Tree Campaign is but an acorn, but it can also be a significant and straightforward expression of our common determination to make a tangible difference in developing and developed countries alike.
We have a short time to avert serious climate change. It gives new impetus to the sayings of a Chinese poet. The author lived 2,500 years ago but the sentiments echo down the ages to all of us facing the challenges of today: “If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed. If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree.”
Climate change confronts us now. There is no longer conjecture or debate around an abstract or hypothetical future. We need action. We need to plant trees and in doing so send a signal to the corridors of political power across the globe that the watching and waiting is over — that countering climate change can take root via one billion small but significant acts in our gardens, parks,countryside and rural areas." |