'Tiny Forests' Take Hold in Urban Centers

The newest trend in urban forestry: micro-forests. The tiny, neighborhood-scale patches of native trees are proliferating in cities around the world, writes Elizabeth Hewitt in National Geographic. In the 1970s, Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki "pioneered a method of planting young indigenous species close together to quickly regenerate forests on degraded land." 

Now, "[i]n Europe, India, and other countries, communities are creating small-footprint, native forests as hyperlocal responses to large-scale environmental challenges." In the Netherlands, IVN Nature Education has led an effort to plant 144 "tiny forests" to date. "Public projects, which IVN coordinates with a local school, community members and a municipality, usually range between 200 and 250 square meters—roughly equivalent to a tennis court." 

The project also encourages private backyard forests, which can be as small as six square meters. "Daan Bleichrodt, who launched IVN’s Tiny Forest initiative with the goal of making nature more accessible to children, said he thinks they are popular because people are becoming more aware of major environmental challenges." And while "tiny plots of trees alone will not solve climate change," "[p]reliminary carbon sequestration data shows that the Tiny Forest planting method is on par with other forms of reforestation in the Netherlands. Wageningen researchers found, on average, that each sequestered about 127.5 kilograms of carbon in 2020."

But while nature-based solutions "can’t substitute decarbonizing the economy," says Cécile Girardin, of Oxford University’s Nature-Based Solutions Initiative, but they can have positive impacts on things like urban cooling, water regulation, and biodiversity.