Providing More Trees to Chicago

by Suzanne Hanney

Carbon dioxide is the main gas that causes global warming, but trees suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air as they grow and store it in their leaves, roots and stems – which means that a pledge by more than 100 nations to end deforestation by 2030 is one step to reduce global warming that emerged from the recent United Nations COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow.

The 110 nations that signed the pledge include the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, China and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to the BBC. Together, the 110 nations have roughly 85 percent of the world’s forests.

When we think of forests, what comes to mind are large landscapes, tropical rainforests and wilderness, said Jerry Adelmann, president and CEO of Openlands, during a YouTube presentation by the non-profit Chicago Scots just prior to COP26. The reality, however, is, that 1 in 2 people around the world are urbanites – and so are 4 out of 5 people in the U.S.

It’s “environmental racism,” Adelmann said, to ignore cities, whose low-income populations may suffer the most from climate change in terms of heat islands and flooding.

Adelmann was joined in the YouTube presentation by Gus Noble, executive director of Chicago Scots; by BBC One “Scotland from the Sky” broadcaster Jamie Crawford; by Cal Flynn, author of “Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape (Penguin Random House); and by Jeff Waddell, ecologist and senior national heritage advisor for the National Trust for Scotland.

All four panelists focused on bringing people back to nature. Children in particular have been disconnected from the outdoors compared to previous generations, Waddell said. Yet, they are the future of the climate movement, Adelmann noted.

“We all have to become advocates for nature,” he said. Telling stories gives underserved populations their voice, whether it is describing the Midwest waterways traveled by Native Americans 200 years ago, or the 7-mile African American Heritage Trail along the Little Calumet River. The latter features canoeing as well as an Underground Railroad site that helped slaves on their way to freedom; an airport near Robbins where Tuskegee Airmen trained and the neighborhood where Barack Obama got his start as an organizer, Adelmann said.

Chicago is built on a swamp, so paving over schoolyards contributes to flooding, said Adelmann, who is also chair of the City of Chicago’s Nature and Wildlife Committee. Trees minimize flooding by holding water in their leaves and roots, but Chicago’s tree canopy has dropped from 19 percent of the city in 2010 to 16 percent today, he said.

The North Side tends to have more tree cover than the disinvested West and South Sides, although downtown and the South Loop are also deficient. To find out how your neighborhood fares in terms of tree canopy, you can go to the Chicago Region Trees Initiative interactive map http://chicagorti.org/interactivemap.

Openlands officials noted that Chicago’s 2022 budget calls for planting 15,000 trees over the next five years. They also pointed to an ordinance passed by the Chicago City Council in June to create an Urban Forestry Advisory Board, which would coordinate the efforts of all City departments – Department of Streets and Sanitation, Chicago Park District, Chicago Department of Transportation – to manage trees.

Daniella Pereira, vice president of community conservation at Openlands, told WBEZ that the city would like to get closer to the national average of 30 percent tree canopy. Attaining that goal would take more biodiversity, because roughly 60 percent of Chicago’s are from just 10 species, which leaves them more vulnerable to pests, such as the emerald ash borer.

Openlands provides TreePlanters Grants in the form of 10 to 40 new trees to groups throughout Chicago and near south suburbs that can coordinate neighbors to plant them in predetermined locations and commit to caring for them in their first crucial years. Openlands provides the ongoing education, supplies, expertise and quality control. https://openlands.org/what-we-do/trees/