Returning the Urban Forest

A nice interview with Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and global advocate of reforestation, in the November/December 2009 issue of Resurgence Magazine. Professor Maathai is founder of The Greenbelt Movement (GBM) and backed by the Billion Tree Campaign, which was launched in Nairobi in 2006 in association with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Reflecting on her upcoming trip to the COP15 Copenhagen Climate Conference next month, she commented in the interview:

“I also encourage the protection of standing trees. We have not yet appreciated the true value of the tree: it stabilises the soil; it gives us shade; if it is a fruit tree it gives us fruit. The tree fixes carbon for us; gives us oxygen; regulates the composition of the air… Trees are a wonderful gift to humanity!”

Read the full interview here.

While much of the Greenbelt Movement’s work is focused on massive tree-planting projects in Kenya and the Congo Basin Forest, her message extends beyond Africa. The organization has extended its work internationally to Europe and the U.S. Although not connected directly with GBM, urban reforestation – the power of habitat corridors and greenbelts within cities – seems to be a theme gaining momentum worldwide, such as with ReForest London and “Return to the Forest Where We Live”, the PBS series about the devastation on urban forests in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast caused by Hurricane Katrina. Among the most extensive restorative designs devoted to this idea currently, at least within the urban environment, is Mithun’s Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan & Catalyst Project, an AIA COTE Top Ten winner in 2005.