Are you participating in the Eno Treelympics 2016?

1 Jan - 25 September 2016. Join and help to plant 100 million trees by 2017.

The ENO Programme organises the 3rd ENO Treelympics, olympiads for tree planting. They will last from 1 Jan to 25 Sep 2016. Their target is to plant 100 million trees by 2017, a pledge they made for Rio+20 Summit 2012. Sign up to participate on their website http://www.treelympics.org/.  Find their Facebook page to interact and tweet #enotreelympics. Africa needs more representation as shown in the map below!

Why?

There are a plenty of reason why tree planting is important. For instance, trees:

• tie carbon (1/5 of CO2 is tied by world forests)
• filter pollution from the air
• help recycle water
• prevent soil loss
• create shade
• give shelter from wind and rain or reduce the effect of tsunamis
• provide homes for animals
• make food for humans and wildlife
• provide an interesting, soothing, learning environment for children and your community

100 Million Trees by 2017

The schools in the ENO  Programme aim to plant 100 Million Trees by 2017. This commitment was given in Rio+20 Summit and highlighted there. BBC's environmental correspondent said that out of 700 commitments, it was "the most dynamic-sounding pledge on the register". It is, but here are other numbers of how much 100 million trees would tie carbon:

If those trees would stay 100 years and grow to 30 metres we can calculate (optimistic) the amount of carbon like this:
Volume PPA 1 m^2 x 30 m / 3 = 10 m^3, biomass 6 tons, and 3 tons carbon. As the value of a carbon ton is 10USD, those trees would then tie 300 million tons of carbon and the value of carbon would be 3 billion USD.

A more realistic estimation could be 1/10 of that including the loss of trees. And one cannot estimate the value of a carbon ton in a long run. But we can certainly make a difference, schools and children around the world!

Let's join in and support Eno with this great project.