Mostly we’re happy that we still exist!
I have to confess to having a deep curiosity about the daily lives of others. By “others” I mean writers and sometimes scientists, and now more recently, start-up founders. There’s something delightfully personal about getting the deets on when your favorite writer (or start-up founder) wakes up, when she goes for a walk or how she generally gets through her day. I mean has one really lived, if one hasn’t obsessed over how many cups of coffee Balzac drank in a day or what Murakami eats for lunch?
Unfortunately (or fortunately) there’s no similar litany of the daily routines of start-up founders. That’s a good thing though. Because a) who cares? b) there’s definitely too many of us c) we all have infinitely less interesting lives than the writers (and probably the scientists too) and d) all our daily routines would probably look like…
There is a reason why the yardstick for success focuses on trees planted, as opposed to trees planted AND their survival rates.
Afforestation, as we have realized, is a tricky business.
You pick a piece of land, which is probably barren and degraded and try to turn it into a thriving forest. A dynamic community replete with tall, dense trees, meandrous vines, thick leafy shrubs and an assortment of diverse creatures from purple bugs to furry squirrels.
Sounds wonderful, right? Turns out it’s quite hard to implement in practice.
Saplings are baby trees and require all of the care, protection and nourishment that any baby of any other species would need. Left out in the open, most are either eaten by goats, trampled on by unsuspecting itinerants, or simply perish due to lack of water and nourishment. So, for any afforestation efforts to be successful, saplings need to be in a fenced environment, protected from animals, and with a reliable source of water and nutrients for the first 2 to 3 years of their life. They also need to be trees that are native and thus well-adapted to the area. Non-native trees are the most susceptible to droughts, pests and other environmental hazards. …
In December 2019, at COP 25, UN Secretary-General Guterres concluded that the world’s efforts to stop climate change so far have been “utterly inadequate” and warned that global warming could pass the “point of no return.” The climate crisis is no longer impending. It’s here and we’re experiencing its devastating impact every day.
This is not the time to just “do our bit.” We all need to think and act big. And by “we,” we mean not just the government, that needs to implement progressive and ambitious climate policies, but also the private sector.
From this conviction stemmed the genesis of Farmers for Forests (F4F). F4F is a new not-for-profit organization with a simple mandate: to increase and protect India’s biodiverse forest cover to fight the climate crises. …
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