Page 5 - NBY News - May 2019

Mother’
Mother’s Das Day Snippetsy Snippets
Mother’
Mother’s Das Day Snippetsy Snippets
Mother’s Day Snippets
Question: What is the significance of the flowers worn on Mothers Day.
country’s Paris climate agreement goal of
reforesting 12 million hectares by 2030. Answer: RED Flowers mean Mom is alive.
Here in the U.S., our forebears chopped down WHITE Flowers mean Mom has transitioned to the other side of the veil.
In 1908 Anna Jarvis of West Virginia, created the sentiment in honor
practically every tree they could until around of her mother. By 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation
Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard that China and 1920, but then we started to regain some of the designating Mother’s Day a National Holiday. Ms. Jarvis resented the
other nations have gone gangbusters with lost tree cover over the next 40 years as commercialism associated with the holiday.
reforestation projects that are ambitious abandoned farms reverted back to forest. Since Carnations became the unofficial flower of Mother’s Day, and
enough to have a significant impact on then, we are barely net positive in forest cover continues to be widely used, in addition to roses.
cutting carbon emissions. Why aren’t we as tree planting campaigns by the U.S. Forest
also doing this here in the U.S.? Service and the non-profit Arbor Day
— Mickie Infurcia, Hamden, CT Foundation have made up for losses from
A recent Boston University (BU) study development and logging. That said, increased
tracking satellite data of vegetation coverage reforestation is not a major part of American
found that the world is indeed getting efforts to meet climate mitigation targets given
greener overall, largely thanks to an more practical ways we can achieve quicker
ambitious reforestation program underway overall emissions reductions
in China.
“China alone accounts
for 25 percent of the REFORESTATION
global net increase in leaf
area with only 6.6 percent
of global vegetated area,”
says lead researcher Chi
Chen of BU’s Department
of Earth and
Environment. “This is
equal to the net greening
in the three largest
countries, Russia, the
United States and Canada,
that together hold 31
percent of the global
vegetated area.”
China’s reforestation efforts date back to Beyond the U.S., though, there is still lots of
the 1970s when the government started “low-hanging fruit” around the world in the
requiring every citizen over age 11 to plant at form of other areas that would be good
least three saplings every year to augment candidates for reforestation. The non-profit
official government-backed reforestation World Resources Institute (WRI) maintains the
projects. The result has been the planting of Atlas of Forest & Landscape Restoration
some 66 billion trees across some 12,000 Opportunities, which includes global overlay
miles of Northern China over the last few maps on current forest coverage, potential forest
decades, with the so-called “Great Green Wall coverage, forest condition and human pressure
of China” expected to snake along some 2,800 on forest landscapes. According to WRI, upwards
continuous miles by 2050. of two billion hectares of degraded or logged
China isn’t the only country hell-bent on over forest lands around the world are ripe for
reforestation. Pakistan embarked on its restoration work if only we can muster the
Billion Tree Tsunami campaign in 2014 and is political will to make it happen.
well on its way of achieving its goal of
restoring healthy forests to some 350,000 CONTACTS: Chi Chen, sites.bu.edu/cliveg/
hectares of degraded land. Meanwhile, people/doctoral-students/chi-chen/; EarthTalk’s
Australia’s “20 Million Trees Program” aims “What Is The Great Green Wall of China?”
to re-establish green corridors and urban earthtalk.org/green-wall-china/; Australia’s 20
forests across the country while mitigating Million Trees Program, nrm.gov.au/national/
climate impacts by facilitating the planting of 20-million-trees; Arbor Day Foundation,
20 million trees by 2020. Another major arborday.org; WRI’s Atlas of Forest & Landscape
reforestation effort with global impact is Restoration Opportunities, wri.org/
happening in Brazil, where the non-profit applications/maps/flr-atlas.
Conservation International is helping restore EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer
30,000 of the hardest hit hectares across the & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit
so-called “arc of deforestation” in the EarthTalk. To donate, visit
Amazon rainforest as a key part of that www.earthtalk.org. Send questions to:
question@earthtalk.org.

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