Cities are at the forefront of the climate crisis. Investments, or the lack thereof, in resilience and equity will affect the livelihoods of an estimated 70% of the world’s population predicted to be living in cities by 2050. When it comes to trees and urban forests, many benefits of actions taken today are not experienced for decades. Investing in nature-based solutions (NbS), such as urban forests and urban green spaces, is a powerful tool in a community’s toolbox with multi-sector benefits - environmental, social, and economic. So, how do we increase lasting and measurable benefits of urban forests and green spaces for all?

2nd World Forum on Urban Forests

Over 1,000 urban forestry leaders from 61 countries met in Washington, D.C. in October 2023 for the 2nd World Forum on Urban Forests (WFUF) to discuss and promote greener, healthier, and happier cities via urban forestry and urban greening. The WFUF was jointly developed by The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Politecnico di Milano, and the Italian Society of Silviculture of Forest Ecology (SISEF). Every five years, the WFUF brings together a diverse global community of urban forestry stakeholders to raise awareness, promote best practices, build capacity, and improve access to information, collaboration, and networking. Co-organizers of the second WFUF included the Arbor Day Foundation, D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT), the International Society of Arboriculture, Smithsonian Gardens, and the United States Forest Service.

I was afforded the opportunity to represent my company, SavATree, at the second WFUF. The week-long event reminded me of the collective energy and enthusiasm for positive change that I experienced in 2020 while learning from and collaborating with my fellow peers, professors, and guest lecturers in the Executive Master of Natural Resources (XMNR) program through Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability (CLiGS). I was inspired by my experience at the WFUF to write this article, briefly touching on the connections between urban forestry and leadership for global sustainability.

Urban Forestry in the Anthropocene

Many of us are familiar with the multiple, simultaneous, and wicked challenges of the Anthropocene (the proposed geological epoch beginning with significant human impact on Earth’s geology) such as climate change, inequality, biodiversity loss, and “The Great Acceleration” of socioeconomic and ecological trends.

Caption: Socio-economic and Earth system trends accelerate after 1950 as a result of the collective activities of humans altering the Earth, leading to the theory of the Anthropocene epoch.
Socio-economic and Earth system trends accelerate after 1950 as a result of the collective activities of humans altering the Earth, leading to the theory of the Anthropocene epoch.

Bill McKibbon famously wrote in a 2006 Washington Post op-ed, “there are no silver bullets,” to tackle the climate crisis, “only silver buckshot”. In other words, a system perspective and approach are required to dissolve siloes, increase impact, and scale solutions to the wicked challenges of the Anthropocene. No one person, company, industry, sector, or country can do it alone as the problems we face are complex, interdisciplinary, and without borders.

Promoting expanded, healthier, and more equitable urban forests and green space, with a community-based focus, has proven to be a multi-pronged lever – protecting biodiversity, increasing equity and quality of life, and mitigating and adapting to climate change. Quantifying, improving, and scaling the impact of these efforts has become a focus in recent years.

Count It, Change It, Scale It

One idea that has stuck with me since the XMNR program came from one of our early guest lecturers, Janet Ranganathan, of the World Resources Institute (WRI). WRI representatives attended the WFUF and regularly contribute to the urban forestry sector across the world. Dr. Ranganathan explained how WRI employs a “count it, change it, scale it” approach to create lasting and measurable impact in three interconnected goals of people, nature, and climate. This framework resonated with me after hearing Dr. Ranganathan’s classroom lecture, and provides a strategic lens through which urban forestry initiatives can be analyzed to identify, implement, and scale effective solutions.

Count It

One must understand what they have (or don’t have) before they can manage it. Technology advances have made GIS tree inventories and urban tree canopy assessments the norm for communities to evaluate and quantify tree resources. Tree inventories provide a bottom up look at the urban forest while tree canopy assessments provide a top-down look at the amount, spatial distribution, and change of tree canopy cover across multiple scales (e.g., parcel, neighborhood, city, county) or timeframes.

Presentations at WFUF explored emerging methods and technologies to measure and track various metrics related to urban forests (e.g., distribution and severity of urban heat, tree equity, tree benefits) The exposure and severity of urban heat islands are being measured by surface and/or air temperature mapping projects. Air quality is being mapped and measured at local scales. Cornell University’s Tree Folio Project used LiDAR to quantify the amount and quality of shade from trees in New York City in relation to street orientation and shade cast from nearby buildings. American Forests’ Tree Equity Score helps cities learn where tree canopy is needed most.

American Forests’ Tree Equity Score uses demographic, socioeconomic and environmental data to prioritize tree planting efforts.
American Forests’ Tree Equity Score uses demographic, socioeconomic and environmental data to prioritize tree planting efforts.

Change It

Data can help improve management of the urban forest for desirable benefits by allowing urban forestry professionals and cities to make more informed decisions to create measurable change. For example, any data collected from the methods and technologies mentioned above can contribute to Urban Forest Master Planning (UFMP) to improve strategic management of urban forests through policy change, benchmarking, goal setting, and co-creating and prioritizing actions and tasks with communities to achieve desired change where it matters most.

Scale It

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act provided the Forest Service a historic opportunity to deliver $1.5 billion in funding to invest in urban forestry initiatives nationwide – primarily focusing on tree planting in underserved communities, which often lack significant tree canopy cover due to historical redlining practices and underfunding. Talk about scaling it! Beyond this historic investment, a number of organizations are helping scale urban forestry and urban greening across the world through improved research and technology, cross-sector collaborations, and innovative partnerships. There is still a lot of work to be done in order to make cities and communities greener, happier, and healthier, but significant progress has already been made.

Leadership for Global Sustainable Development

The convening of the WFUF is a global effort to bring together diverse perspectives and facilitate new partnerships to scale the positive impacts of urban forests and urban green spaces. The WFUF assists in the co-creation of goals and a shared direction for urban forestry stakeholders, coordinating and aligning efforts where it matters most, and furthering commitment from around the world. As we learned in the XMNR program, the intersection of direction, alignment, and commitment is where leadership is most effective. We also learned that anyone can lead from where they are, no matter who they are or what the challenge. Urban forestry stakeholders are leading from where they are to promote healthy, inclusive, and resilient cities and communities around the world.

“Action now is possible, action now is necessary and urgent, and action now is where we should focus our efforts.”

Juergen Voegele
Vice President for Sustainable Development
The World Bank Group

Headshot of JP McDonnell

About the Author:
JP McDonnell is the Assistant Manager of the Consulting Group at SavATree, a leading North American tree care company, where he and his team make the intersection between trees and people work by providing actionable tree intelligence to clients. JP is an American Society of Consulting Arborists Registered Consulting Arborist (RCA) and an International Society of Arboriculture Board Certified Master Arborist (BCMA). He previously worked for NYC Parks as an Urban Forester after holding several other public and private sector arboriculture/urban forestry positions, and currently volunteers on a number of industry committees to advance the profession. JP is a 2020 graduate of Virginia Tech's Executive Master of Natural Resources and holds a B.S. in Natural Resources from Sewanee: The University of the South.