As the Pacific Northwest sweltered through a record-breaking
heat wave last week, many residents here in America's least
air-conditioned city sought relief under the shade of cedars and maples
in city parks. But in some areas of Seattle, that shelter was hard to
come by.
"If you look at aerial photographs,
north Seattle looks like a forest," said Washington state Rep. Bill
Ramos, a suburban Democrat who sponsored a bill the legislature recently
passed to help cities improve their tree canopy.
"On the south side, you see nothing but rooftops and asphalt and not a
green thing anywhere. It's strictly a matter of socioeconomics and
race."
That disparity is not unique to Seattle. American Forests, a
Washington, D.C.-based conservation nonprofit, released a nationwide
analysis last month showing that low-income neighborhoods and
communities of color have significantly less tree canopy. Those areas
also are more likely to suffer from the urban heat island effect
caused by a lack of shade and an abundance of heat-absorbing asphalt.
Heat islands can be as much as 10 degrees hotter than surrounding
neighborhoods.
"We found that the wealthiest neighborhoods have 65% more tree canopy
cover than the highest poverty neighborhoods," said Ian Leahy, the
group's vice president of urban forestry.
"As cities are beginning to heat up due to climate change, people are
realizing that trees are critical infrastructure. I've never seen as
much momentum toward urban forestry across the board."
In many cities and states, policymakers and advocates say they're
aiming to correct decades of inequities in urban tree canopy. They
acknowledge how racist policies such as redlining have had a stark
effect on the presence of urban green space, and that trees are
important for public health. Some leaders have even pledged to use
American Forests' "Tree Equity Score" to target their tree plantings in
the neighborhoods that need it most.
"People weren't thinking about trees as these resources that provide a
lot of benefits," said Kevin Sayers, urban forestry coordinator with
the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. "They thought of them as
niceties, and trees followed money. There's now a recognition that trees
were not equitably distributed and maintained."
Sayers works to help cities and nonprofits manage and improve urban
forests. Michigan's 10-year Forest Action Plan, which was drafted last
year, calls for a neighborhood-by-neighborhood tree canopy analysis,
with the goal of reaching equity. Sayers said he will work to
incorporate the new tree equity data into that plan.
In many places, efforts to increase urban tree canopy are still in
their early stages. Officials are conducting surveys, setting goals and
making plans—while acknowledging the real work is still ahead. They say
it will take time to build trust in underserved communities, scale up
planting programs and change local laws to protect existing trees. But
longtime foresters say political buy-in for such efforts has never been
higher.
Trees provide important public health benefits, starting with the
cooling shade they provide. A study published last year in the journal
Environmental Epidemiology found that heat causes thousands of excess
deaths in the United States each year, far above official estimates.
City and state leaders expect climate change to worsen the threat.
"Trees are nature's air conditioners, and we're starting to talk
about them as a real adaptation investment," said Shaun O'Rourke, a
managing director at the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank who also
serves as the state's chief resilience officer.
The state has worked with 20 municipalities in its program to fund
climate resilience projects, and all of them have sought more resources
for urban tree planting, O'Rourke said. Meanwhile, the Rhode Island
Department of Health has incorporated tree canopy data into its health
equity indicators, putting it alongside categories such as health care
access and food insecurity.
"The data shows that Latinos and African Americans have a higher
likelihood of dying after five days of extreme heat, and that's an
injustice," said Cindy Montañez, CEO of Tree People, a nonprofit that
works on planting and education projects near Los Angeles. "Planting
trees is not about carbon reduction, it's about saving lives."
Los Angeles has appointed its first city forest officer to coordinate
the city's urban forestry efforts across departments. Rachel Malarich,
who took the job in 2019, has been tasked with increasing tree canopy in
underserved neighborhoods by 50% by 2028.
"Nineteen percent of all the tree canopy cover in Los Angeles exists
where 1% of our population lives, concentrated in these affluent areas,"
Malarich said. "The conversation has changed, and there are more public
officials recognizing that tree canopy is not a beautification measure,
but a central piece of our infrastructure."
Trees also help to filter pollution from the air and absorb
stormwater runoff. Studies also have shown that the presence of trees
can have positive effects on mental health and cognitive function.
Earlier this year, the Phoenix city council voted to partner with
American Forests to create an equitable tree canopy across all of its
neighborhoods by 2030. The city has identified the busiest walking
corridors where shade could prove most beneficial, and it's planning to
plant 1,800 trees along nine miles of "cool corridors" each year. The
city's recently passed budget creates an Office of Heat Response &
Mitigation, which includes tree and shade administrators, and will pay
for five new forestry staffers to plant and maintain urban forests.
"We have more tree cover in the higher-income areas of our community,
and that's something we're trying to be intentional about changing,"
said Mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat. "We've always had strong support
for tree planting in our city, but we've seen a real focus on equity in
the last year and a half."
In Boston, Northeastern University associate professor of law and
policy Neenah Estrella-Luna is serving as a consultant to help draft the
city's first urban forest plan. Her team is working with city officials
and community leaders to develop a pathway to tree equity in 20 years.
"The folks most marginalized—people of color, immigrants and
low-income people—have the least access to anything green," she said.
"This is clearly an issue of environmental justice."
Some state lawmakers have been active on the issue as well. Ramos,
the Washington state legislator, introduced a bill this year that will
require the state's Department of Natural Resources to conduct a
statewide assessment of urban tree canopy to find where it's lacking.
The measure, which was adopted by large, bipartisan majorities and
signed into law, will also allow the agency to provide technical
assistance to local governments for forest management. Half the money
must go to underserved communities.
"We know trees create better health," Ramos said. "How can we say
that some people should have trees and other people shouldn't?"
In California, Assembly Member Luz Rivas, a Democrat from the San
Fernando Valley, has sponsored a bill that would create a funding
program to help communities adapt to extreme heat. Projects could
include urban forestry and green spaces. The bill passed overwhelmingly
in the Assembly and is under committee review in the Senate.
Rivas also has fought in recent years to preserve investments in the
state Urban Greening Program, which is funded by cap-and-trade revenues.
"My community has been disproportionately affected by pollution and
the effects of climate change, including extreme heat," Rivas said. "Our
tree canopy isn't as dense as other parts of Los Angeles."
State and local leaders acknowledge that reaching tree equity won't
be easy or simple. Many urbanized areas lack suitable places to plant,
especially spots that can accommodate the large trees that provide the
biggest benefits. Also, most urban trees grow on private land, meaning
cities can't rely only on parks and streets to reach their goals.
In many neighborhoods, cities have done a poor job of maintaining
existing trees, which can damage houses and cars if unhealthy trees are
left to fall. That's made some residents skeptical about new plantings.
"Tree planting is always a very visible thing, but nobody likes to
give due recognition to tree maintenance," said Sayers, the Michigan
forestry leader.
Even in cities with strong tree planting programs, leaders have found
they're still losing canopy cover each year as urban sprawl and
development uproots existing trees to make way for housing. Forestry
experts say cities need strong tree protection ordinances to have a
chance of reaching their goals.
Many cities and states also are reassessing which types of trees to plant, as shifting conditions brought on by climate change upend long-held views about which trees will thrive in a certain region.
"We're now looking at some Southern species," said O'Rourke, the
Rhode Island resilience officer. "As we look at climate projections,
we're thinking about how we might look more like the mid-Atlantic
states."
Foresters say their programs are often understaffed, and they're some
of the first to face cuts during difficult economic times. Kesha
Braunskill, urban forestry coordinator with the Delaware Forest Service,
said tree equity programs need to have a stronger workforce and a
consistent presence in the areas they're trying to reach.
"We need more of us, and more of us that look like the communities we
serve," she said. "We have to formulate relationships. We can't just
walk in, plant a tree and walk away."
©2021 The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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