Dear , 

A warm welcome to our new readers!

We create our newsletters so we can bring you fascinating stories of people around the world who are working to breathe life back into our beautiful planet. We are also excited to share local events and meetups that continue these conversations and foster a sense of community in doing so. Finally, our Compendium excerpts offer evidence-based approaches to eco-restoration that have taken place globally to address climate change.

This month, we are continuing to feature The Global Landscape Forum Speaker Interview Series. Check out the conversation with youth leader Felix Finkbeiner, who is leading massive reforestation efforts with his organization Plant-for-the-Planet! Young people are speaking out more about restoration, as we all become more aware of these climate solutions.

We'll tell you more to keep you updated about the exciting times that lie ahead in restoration work around the planet!

Join us in the conversation, and stay captivated by Nature's potential to heal, restore, and revive.

Manjulika Das, Curator and Editor

How "Fruit-Tree Portfolios" could Combat Global Malnutrition

Farmer planting trees during the Fruit Tree Portfolio Establishment on a Project beneficiaries farm Machakos. Photo credit: World Agroforestry

Many policy makers see the need to transform agricultural production systems, given that nutrition levels are falling in many parts of the world. One area of focus is increasing tree cultivation: 74% of fruits produced globally are harvested from trees. In addition to fruits, trees produce leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, and edible oils. 

"A sufficient intake of fruits can alleviate micronutrient deficiencies and reduce the risks of associated diseases," said Stepha McMullin, lead author of a study on the subject published in Food Security journal. But she said, "In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa,” not enough fruits are produced and consumed on average; the problem is worse “in specific seasons."

Trees have extensive roots that make them more resilient to droughts and dry periods compared to annual crops. This allows rural households to diversify their staple-based diets. 

McMullin and the team from World Agroforestry (ICRAF - International Council for Research in Agroforestry) have initiated 'fruit-tree portfolios' in Kenya. In partnership with local farmers, they select for production fruit-tree species that meet nutritional needs within the socio-economic framework of a particular area. The study was conducted under the Fruiting Africa and Food Trees projects, funded by the European Commission and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The portfolio approach has many advantages as it can be easily adapted to different locations with their different agro-ecological conditions. It can also offer different varieties of fruits that are available over a longer period to offset the problem that less food may be available during certain seasons. 

Additionally, the portfolio works towards transforming local food systems to enhance nutrition and combat malnutrition. This effort is directly aligned with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2) that aims to "End all forms of malnutrition by 2025."

The portfolio approach can also help address dietary gaps. Using it, researchers could learn what foods people eat at different times of the year and use that information to find tree species that yield during the lean times between harvests, thus providing more nutrients in local diets.

Read more here.

 Global Landscapes Forum: UN Decade of Eco-restoration Interview Series

featuring Felix Finkbeiner


Photo credit: Plant for the Planet

At just 21 years old, Felix Finkbeiner heads Plant-for-the-Planet, an initiative that works to raise awareness about the benefits of tree planting. The organization has celebrated over 14 billion tree plantings since it launched in 2007, and has inspired youth the world over to participate in the massive reforestation effort. 

From School Backyards to the World’s Ecosystems

Plant-for-the-Planet started off as a small school project about 12 years ago when Felix was in the fourth-grade. He heard about the work of Wangari Maathai, a renowned Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and founder of the Green Belt Movement. Thoroughly inspired by her work, Felix proposed to his classmates that they plant a million trees in each country of the world - but “without having any conception of what a million was or how we would get there”. After they planted their first tree, the movement gained traction, and even became competitive, as neighboring schools found out about the tree planting efforts.

“After one year we had planted about 50,000 trees, and after three years about a million”, Felix says. What started out as a small movement in Germany grew to now involve youth from all over the world. Plant-for-the-Planet had become international.

The organization went on to set up 400 physical academies in 73 countries to educate children about the climate crisis, and train them to become stewards of the land. At present, close to 81,000 children participate in the program with a focus on youth activism.

Yet another aspect of Plant-for-the-Planet involves the actual restoration of ecosystems. One such project is currently underway on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Since 2015, a team of 108 employees has already planted four million trees at the rate of one tree per 15 seconds.

“In the Yucatán Peninsula, we focus exclusively on planting indigenous species. The first thing we did was to try and reconstruct the species that likely existed in the degraded and destroyed rainforests. We focus on nine species in our restoration, but there are a lot more that we plant intermittently,” Felix explains.

Compendium Notes

Here's another excerpt from our Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-Restoration to Address Global Warming. The article below is from our fifth issue, July 2019, Vol. 3 No. 1 (pp. 19-20):

The legacy of 4,500 years of polyculture agroforestry in the eastern Amazon, Maezumi et al. 2018

Pre-Colombian land management practices have had a considerable impact on the Amazon rainforest. Researchers have found that people continued for millenia the cultivation practices that let them keep their ecosystems healthy and sustained a large and growing human civilization. 

The study focused on human-developed, or anthropogenic, landscapes that have endured over the past 4,500 years. These landscapes pointed to "an abrupt enrichment of edible plant species in fossil lake and terrestrial records associated with pre-Columbian occupation" [Maezumi 2018: 540]. Despite changes in both societies and climate, they attained long-term food security through such practices as closed-canopy forest enrichment, limited clearing for crop cultivation and low-severity fire management. Today, edible plants still persist in modern forests of the eastern Amazon. 

Food security in the region can be largely attributed to the adoption of polyculture agroforestry around 4,500 years ago. This combines "the cultivation of multiple annual crops with progressive edible food enrichment, and exploitation of aquatic resources."

This piece of largely hidden Amazonian history illuminates a path forward for global food production systems that are struggling to feed a growing population. The authors assert that ecological restoration and agricultural productivity are synergistic processes that can be used to sustain populations. 

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Maezumi, S. Yoshi, et al., 2018, The legacy of 4,500 years of polyculture agroforestry in the eastern Amazon, Nature Plants 4, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-018-0205-y.

Barn Swallows and the
Tyranny of Small Decisions

Earlier this month, on November 17th, we sent out an e-mail about the plight of barn swallows in Massachusetts.  Related to that was a discussion of how one little decision made by many people may end up being a collective decision that eventually no one wants (like global warming). We also asked readers to complete a brief survey.

Now, the original post and reader survey responses are up on our website, here.  Enjoy!