How Planting Trees Helps All 17 Sustainable Development Goals

Because 3 billion of the world’s poor live on less than $2.50/day and depend almost entirely on productive land for their livelihoods, reforestation can improve human lives by providing short and long-term employment, increasing the land's ability to produce food and building materials over time, and protecting infrastructure from extreme weather events.

Any efforts to eradicate poverty, then, should include building a solid foundation of healthy, well-managed forests, watersheds, and soils. Many One Tree Planted projects that occur in resource-challenged areas have an educational and sustainable agroforestry component, so that the trees aren't just improving the environment and ecosystems, they are changing lives for the better.

36% of cropland, forest, and pasture systems are experiencing declining productivity, which is bad news for the over 2.5 billion people that depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. This is a key driver of global hunger and food insecurity. Restoring degraded forests, planting trees, and promoting sustainable agriculture through agroforestry in agricultural areas can address hunger by improving economic well-being and protecting the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. And when sustainable agroforestry trees are incorporated into larger plantings, they can help to protect new plantings and native forests from over-harvesting and extraction that can occur when people are dependent on forest resources for survival.

Reforestation can improve human health by providing sustainable, high quality supplies of food and water over time, modulating temperatures, absorbing rainwater during storm events, providing a buffer against powerful storm systems, reducing the incidence and transmission of diseases, and more.  And the tree benefits don’t stop there: in addition to health benefits, forests provide traditional remedies and key ingredients in 25% of all western medicines. An added bonus is that spending time in or near forests has been shown to significantly improve mental health. There's even a term for this: forest bathing! 

In addition to providing jobs and restoring landscapes, many of our partners educate reforestation communities about topics that are relevant to them and the success of the planting, including sustainable agroforestry, land use practices, site monitoring, and micro-economics.

We have seen that planting trees and maintaining them directly promotes education by increasing incomes and reducing the time spent securing basic necessities such as food and fuelwood. This gives parents more time and money to educate their children, and exposes them to opportunities they may not otherwise have had access to. 

Degraded landscapes with reduced ecosystem services can place a severe strain on the ability of women to get water, collect fuelwood, and gather food. In some resource-challenges areas, women must travel for miles on foot to gather these basic necessities. Naturally, reforestation can increase gender equity and empower women by increasing their access to quality nutrition and other essentials of life. By partnering with women-run and women-integrative cooperatives, we build on that empowerment by helping women restore their local landscapes and increase their family incomes by growing agroforestry crops. 

Water is life, and access to clean, plentiful water could significantly improve the lives of the approximately 2 billion people that experience water stress due to pollution the degradation of important watershed resources including forests and wetlands.

Due to the links between land management and the water cycle — and the key role that trees play in capturing, filtering, and retaining water— reforestation can significantly improve water supplies by absorbing stormwater, reducing flooding and erosion, increasing moisture in the air and soil, and more. 

Name any energy source, and the infrastructure related to, and activities associated with its extraction likely has a land impact — but bioenergy undoubtably has a larger deforestation footprint than wind, solar, and fossil fuels.

Reforestation and sustainable land management, then, can significantly improve sustainability by reducing reforestation pressure on primary forests that are ecologically priceless. It can also help to heal the land degradation impacts of mining for coal, gas, and petroleum-based fuels. 

Throughout history, human societies and economies have grown on the back of healthy ecosystems that provide food, fuel, and clean water — and little about that has changed today.

From collecting seed to growing and planting seedlings, managing projects, monitoring planting sites, and growing food crops via sustainable agroforestry, reforestation both directly and indirectly generates jobs and economic activity — and can have a profound impact on local economies. 

The development of “quality, reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure” requires healthy forests and land that is managed and restored sufficiently to minimize flooding, landslides, dust storms, and other threats.

Degrading land and deferring maintenance burdens new and existing infrastructure, shortening its life-span and minimizing its long-term effectiveness. In contrast, healthy ecosystems will support and complement them. That's where the simple act of planting trees can help create healthy thriving communities.

Inequality often leads to land degradation when disadvantaged communities cut down forests for fuelwood, hunt wildlife for food, and clear land for agriculture. On the other hand, reforestation can increase incomes, make land more productive, and reduce the need for migration to more fertile lands. Done correctly, planting trees it’s a win-win for people and the planet!

Planting trees can help to restore important ecosystem services in urban and suburban areas — and the rural areas that supply these centers with food, water, energy, and raw building materials. When water, soil, and air quality are improved, environmental risks and impacts such as flash floods, respiratory illnesses, and the UHI effect are reduced. And reclaiming brownfield areas for urban forestscan increase urban resilience and take pressure off of rural habitats, too.

Reforestation and forest science have key roles to play in developing more sustainable ways to produce and extract agricultural goods, forest products, energy, and minerals from the land. The interconnectedness and availability of resources informs decisions and drives innovation, helping us to do and be better.

Healthy trees cool the planet by absorbing and storing harmful particulate pollutants and GHGs — in fact, a mature tree can absorb an average of 22lbs of CO2 per year. Planting trees can increase the resilience of ecosystems, help minimize climate change effects, and buy people and governments time to adapt to changing conditions. Planting native seedlings in ecologically appropriate areas can also counteract soil and biodiversity loss and improve human well-being. 

Everything is connected — and that goes for terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems, too! In fact, everything that happens on land has implications for oceans — including surface run-off, sediment flows, and atmospheric emissions. Land restoration, then, reduces pressures on these underwater ecosystems, allowing them to continue providing economic and social benefits for coastal communities. That's what our Pacific Northwest reforestation project is all about: plant trees for the orcas!

Reforestation and conservation are essential to building a better, more sustainable future where poverty is reduced, food and water are available, biodiversity is safeguarded, and sustainable livelihoods are possible. Healthy forests = happy people!

When land is degraded and food supplies run low, human populations necessarily focus on basic survival, which can lead to resource conflict and competition. This “rush” then drives further degradation and deforestation. Restoring forests can help to reverse these trends and reduce the likelihood of clashing between communities. 

Reforestation can foster partnerships between organizations and governments, allowing local initiatives to be scaled up to regional, national, and so on. The relationships that are built by working together to plant trees can make all of the difference in getting access to funding and other resources.