E07: Divya Gupta & Vijay Ramprasad − For the love of trees

In this episode, you'll be learning about trees. As many of you may already know, tree planting campaigns are a very popular solution to climate change. You’ve probably all heard slogans such as “buy a tee plant a tree”.  And planting trees sounds easy enough, right? Unfortunately, the reality is not quite as simple, and many tree plantations fail. And when they do fail, they tend to impact the local communities they’re implemented in negative ways. 

Recently I’ve read a very inspiring article discussing the pitfalls and limitations of tree planting efforts as a solution to climate change. I’ve had a chance to virtually sit down with two of the interdisciplinary scientists who worked on the paper, namely with Divya Gupta (Assistant Professor at the State University of New York in Binghamton) and Vijay Ramprasad (Senior Fellow at the Center for Ecology Development and Research in Dehra Dun, India).

During this conversation, you’ll learn about some of the important ecological services forests provide. You’ll also learn about why it is so challenging to successfully plant trees in order to sequester carbon. And, most importantly, Divya Gupta and Vijay Ramprasad share their thoughts with us on how we could rethink the way we go about planting trees, be it by including local communities in projects, by focusing on protecting existing forests instead of planting new ones, or simply by taking a good look at our own carbon footprints.