Sustainable Footprint

THE BILLION TREE CAMPAIGN

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a major worldwide tree planting campaign. Under the Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign, people, communities, business and industry, civil society organizations and governments are encouraged to enter tree planting pledges online with the objective of planting at least one billion trees worldwide each year.
In a call to further individual and collective action, UNEP has set a new goal of planting 7 billion trees by the end of 2009. The campaign strongly encourages the planting of indigenous trees and trees that are appropriate to the local environment.

Under the auspicious patronage of Prof. Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize Laureate) and Prince Albert II of Monaco, this campaign will encourage the pledging, planting and caring for one billion new trees globally. The World Agroforestry Centre*) is proud to provide the scientific support to this initiative.

*) see thematic lesson and text about agroforestry (now only in the Dutch version,english version coming soon)

Agroforestry: combining trees with agriculture

Trees play a crucial role in almost all terrestrial ecosystems and provide a range of products and services to rural and urban people. As natural vegetation is cleared for agriculture and other types of development, the benefits that trees provide are best sustained by integrating trees into agriculturally productive landscapes — a practice known as agroforestry. Traditional farming often used this system, but in modern farming it is often lost. It could be the best possibility of real sustainable farming.

Prof. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
“When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope.”

More Quotes about Trees

“The symbolism – and the substantive significance – of planting a tree has universal power in every culture and every society on Earth, and it is a way for individual men, women and children to participate in creating solutions for the environmental crisis.”
Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

At first, I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.
Chico Mendes, Brazilian Environmentalist

"If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed.
If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree."
Chinese poet, 500 BC

"He who plants a tree loves others beside himself."
English proverb

"The best friend on Earth of man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically,we have one of the greatest resources of the Earth."
Frank Lloyd Wright

"They are beautiful in their peace; they are wise in their silence. They will stand after we are dust. They teach us, and we tend them."
Galeain ip Altiem MacDunelmor

"Though a tree grows so high, the falling leaves return to the root. "
Malay proverb

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
Greek proverb

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
Martin Luther

"The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'"
John F. Kennedy

"Trees are poems that Earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness."
Kahlil Gibran

"If what I say resonates with you, it is merely because we are both branches on the same tree."
W. B. Yeats

"A tree is our most intimate contact with nature."
George Nakashima, woodworker

"A tree uses what comes its way to nurture itself. By sinking its roots deeply into the earth, by accepting the rain that flows towards it, by reaching out to the sun, the tree perfects its character and becomes great. ... Absorb, absorb, absorb. That is the secret of the tree."
Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao

"Plant trees. They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival: oxygen and books. "
A. Whitney Brown

"Each generation takes the Earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed. "
J. Sterling Morton

"To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals."
Mikhail Gorbachev

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. "
John Muir

"The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life and activity; it affords protection to all beings."
Buddhist Sutra

"People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world which cannot sustain people. "
Bryce Nelson

"Reforesting the earth is possible, given a human touch."
Sandra Postel and Lori Heise, Worldwatch Institute

"When you see the trees swaying to the tune of a gentle breeze... think of it as a dance in your honor."
Marjolein Bastin

"Plant trees, Lots of trees "
"An Inconvenient Truth" Al Gore

see website:
http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/index.asp

back

top

Sustainable Footprint

Sustainable Footprint
Projectbureau e-linQ
Nieuw Eyckholt 292P
6419 DJ Heerlen
T (045) 574 11 81
E info@e-linq.nl
I www.e-linq.nl