American Scientist

TREEKEEPERS: The Race for a Forested Future. Lauren E. Oakes. 336 pp. Basic Books, 2024. $30.00.

In a world grappling with climate change and ecological degradation, tree planting has emerged as a beacon of hope. Lauren Oakes’s newest book, Treekeepers: The Race for a Forested Future, dives into these efforts, exploring the complexities of restoring forests worldwide and the opportunities associated with these tasks. Traveling to areas where forests have suffered exploitation and degradation in places such as Chile, British Colombia, Hawaiʻi, and Scotland, Oakes intertwines personal experiences with insights from scientists, land managers, and seed savers. Oakes also captures the optimism of those working to restore forests, while also juxtaposing it against the commodification of nature through the sale of carbon offsets. This tension between hope and the realities of economic systems is a recurring theme throughout the book.

Like the author, I grapple with questions about how to harness the carbon sequestration power of trees without undermining their broader ecological roles: How can we restore severely degraded forests? Is it ever appropriate to plant nonnative tree species? How do we fund these efforts? Ultimately, Oakes leaves us with a broader question that transcends tree planting: How do we coexist with forests? We rely on them for so much—carbon sequestration being just one of their many vital functions. Yet forests face numerous threats and stressors, and most forests that exist today are novel ecosystems with no historical precedent.

Oakes suggests that instead of the term “restore,” we should use “renovate” when describing stewardship of degraded lands. This term acknowledges that while we cannot return to past conditions, we can focus on repairing and improving ecosystems. This approach embraces change while accommodating new characteristics that may differ from historical states. As Oakes writes, “I learned that we can never go back; no action today could ever erase what happened or fully bring back what once was. But collectively, people can renovate; they can repair, impart new vigor, revive.”

One of the challenges in tree planting efforts is balancing the speed of carbon benefits and ecological integrity. Certain tree species that are chosen for their ability to sequester carbon quickly may come at a cost to biodiversity and ecosystem balance. This tension is exemplified in Oakes’s visit to a Paulownia plantation in England. Native to China, Paulownia is among the fastest-growing trees in the world, capable of putting on 15 feet of growth annually and developing an extensive root system. Research cited by Oakes estimates that an acre of Paulownia can offset the equivalent emissions of 80 cars annually. However, its rapid growth comes with risks: It outcompetes native vegetation and fails to support the insects, fungi, and birds essential to a thriving ecosystem. In contrast, Oakes visits a site where native woodland species are being restored. This slower-growing mix will take decades to sequester the same amount of carbon that the Paulownia plantation absorbs in a single year, but these native forests offer a more holistic restoration, supporting biodiversity and ecological resilience over time.

Given the urgency of the climate crisis, should we embrace drastic and potentially risky solutions?

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Given the urgency of the climate crisis, should we embrace drastic and potentially risky solutions? Oakes explains how economic systems often prioritize short-term, singular gains, whether through carbon markets or timber harvesting, at the expense of long-term forest health and biodiversity. Most tree planting efforts today rely on carbon offset markets, where greenhouse gas emitters pay for the carbon sequestration benefit of trees to counterbalance their own emissions. Critics of carbon offset markets often highlight unreliable claims, greenwashing, and harm to local communities. But another significant challenge in commodifying the carbon benefits of trees is the trade-offs: Maximizing one attribute often diminishes others.

This issue is an important one: how a singular focus on one aspect of forests can come at the expense of others. In the forests of the Northeastern United States, where I live and work, a sole focus on short-term revenue has resulted in what is termed high-grading, where the largest and most valuable trees are harvested. Over time, this practice leaves forests depleted. It is increasingly being recognized that managing forests for diverse benefits ensures the best long-term outcomes. A growing number of forest managers and landowners are employing techniques that harvest trees not only for wood, but also to rehabilitate forests, enhance complexity, and improve ecosystem functioning. Unfortunately, our economic systems still fall short of fully valuing this type of holistic stewardship. Unlike locally grown organic produce, sustainably harvested wood rarely commands a premium price. Although carbon offset markets provide a mechanism to monetarily value a tree’s carbon benefits, we lack accessible mechanisms to financially support the other benefits of forests, such as water quality, biodiversity, and community resilience.

An approach that includes supporting local economic development by fostering environmental restoration is important for the future. Indeed, Oakes writes about a Panamanian community that collects tree seeds and establishes small-scale, decentralized nurseries. These processes underscore how local communities—those with deep knowledge of and reliance on surrounding forests—are often best positioned to steward these ecosystems. In the end, Oakes offers an optimistic perspective on tree planting, despite its challenges:

The more I looked inside the black box of the global reforestation movement, the more inspired I became, which surprised me, given the complexity of everything I kept uncovering. There is no shortage of problems—failed plantings, conflicts over land use, shortfalls in capacity and resources, and faulty forest credits that don’t deliver the promised carbon sequestration service, to name a few. Yet there is also an abundance of people willing and wanting to problem-solve the issues that arise and to keep working toward a more forested future.

In the face of global climate and ecological challenges, Treekeepers: The Race for a Forested Future offers a hopeful model for how we might coexist with forests and create a future where they thrive alongside humans.