This short post is mostly a review of “Treekeepers,” reference 1 in this paper. However, it is something more. One thing that the author of this book does very effectively is presenting the complexities of trees, reforesting and afforesting lands where this is possible and desirable. By the way, reforesting is planting trees and otherwise developing forests where there once were forests within humans’ memories, and afforesting is planting trees and developing forests where there were no forests within humans’ memories.
A large part of this book deals with trees potential to sequester carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change, and the attendant buying and selling of carbon offsets / credits. The money derived from the latter frequently provides a large part of the incentive for reforestation and/or afforestation. Thus, these are important for both forestation and mitigating climate change. However, forestation provides many other services in addition to sequestering carbon.