Battling Climate Change One Tree at a Time
Those in the business of silviculture have their work cut out for them
Erika Sherk
Forestry – previously an industry bent on the destruction of trees – is now moving into a position of power in the fight against climate change. Though fingers are most often pointed at fossil fuels and heavy industry as the major evils in climate change, deforestation and forest degradation account for creating more than 20 per cent of environmental carbon – more than the transportation sector and just behind the energy industry.
Trees are a special case when it comes to carbon. They have immense potential to suck it up through photosynthesis but, on the flip side, immense potential to pour huge amounts back into the environment when they release it, if killed.
However, this isn’t globally known and in many struggling developing countries, deforestation is still the path to economic survival. Logs can be sold, crops can be planted, and what good are trees that just stand there? As a result, the world is losing approximately 13 billion hectares of forest each year – the equivalent of 200 square acres per day. The majority of this takes place in developing countries and two Canadian companies have figured out a way to tackle this problem aggressively in a way that not only contributes to mitigating climate change, but also brings in a profit at the same time.
Reforesting in developing countries as a method of mitigating climate change is a fairly new movement on the international stage. REDD projects, for example, (Reducing Emissions by Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) first hit the international climate change scene in 2005. However, the Brinkman Group of Companies has been working behind the scenes for more than 15 years, reforesting the world through a system of putting trees in the ground and pulling out a profit – using business to create environmental change. Once a tiny tree-planting company in the wilds of British Columbia, Brinkman Group is now a multinational corporation that took its owner’s environmentalism and passion to fight climate change one seedling at a time – or, more accurately, thousands of seedlings at a time – and made it profitable. It’s a business model of environmentalism that Dirk Brinkman, owner and founder, plans to use to decimate the volume of carbon in the atmosphere.
And from the old hands to the new, another Canadian company is just starting out on a similar path. Heartwood Forests was started by Kahlil Baker, a 28-year-old Canadian with a background in economics and environmental sciences and a passion for reforestation as a tool to slow down climate change and improve the lives of the poverty-stricken at the same time. Heartwood Forests is at the fledgling stage. This spring the company planted 250 acres – its proof of concept – and is actively seeking investors. It is the start of what Baker hopes will be a long-term operation to make his investors money and help rescue the environment at the same time.
It is this approach, making environmentalism profitable, that the director of international programs at the University of British Columbia forestry faculty, Hosny El-Lakany, calls “the ideal situation.” Among his many international forestry roles, El-Lakany is presently the Canadian member of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) board of trustees, and former director of the Forest Resources Division with the UN Food and Agriculture Association (FAO).“If (companies) can establish plantations on degraded land, deforested long ago, and use this as an economic function plus an environmental and social function, I think that should be commended.”
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