MEMO: Building Back Better Includes Our Forests and Green Spaces

President Biden’s Build Back Better Act is a once-in-a-generation investment in the effort to tackle the climate crisis. 

Trees and forests are essential for maintaining healthy communities and ecosystems. The Build Back Better Act’s investments to support forestry programs and initiatives are key to making our communities more resilient to climate change and building up the critical green infrastructure we need to take on the climate crisis. In total, the funding for forestry and related programs included in the Build Back Better Act could plant 38 million trees across the country.

With communities’ need for investments only growing stronger every day and the House of Representatives already acting on this bold agenda, the Sierra Club once again is calling on senators to pass the Build Back Better Act. 

*** Senior Sierra Club policy staff and spokespeople are available to discuss the critical need for maintaining full support for urban green space programs. ***

Promoting Green Spaces and Tree Planting is Essential for Taking on the Climate Crisis

The following programs that support green space development and community tree planting must be included in the final Build Back Better Act at full funding levels:

• $2.5 billion for the Urban and Community Forestry Assistance Program: Tree planting works to decrease the effects of the climate crisis in urban communities by increasing tree canopy cover within these neighborhoods, mitigating the urban heat island effect. This program currently serves more than 200 million people in more than 7,700 communities across the U.S. through the development and maintenance of local urban forestry programs. 

• $50 million for activities to improve Forest Carbon Monitoring Technologies and $50 million for the inventory of old and mature forests: These programs are crucial  in delivering on the science necessary to protect our old and mature trees, which are the largest sources of natural carbon sequestration, and also developing the technology we need to monitor that sequestration.

• $100 million for Urban Parks through the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership program: White neighborhoods are three times more likely to have access to nearby nature than communities of color, and the parks and green spaces in wealthier neighborhoods are likely to be larger than the parks and green spaces in less-affluent communities. ORLP provides direct support for building new and maintaining existing parks in urban communities that often lack green space and tree coverage.

As negotiations around the size of the Build Back Better Act have continued, opponents have made bad faith criticisms of these critical forestry programs. Faced with these attacks, Sierra Club is calling on Senators to retain full funding for these programs. 

Climate Impacts We Can Mitigate By Protecting and Expanding Forests and Green Spaces

Without federal action, the following effects of climate change will increasingly devastate vulnerable urban communities, communities of color, and lower-income communities:

• Flooding: Climate change leads to more frequent and heavier rainfall, higher sea levels, and more frequent and more powerful hurricanes, all of which increase the likelihood of flooding in urban areas and elsewhere. Protecting existing and expanding new forests and green spaces builds up the green infrastructure needed to abate flooding and limit runoff to protect communities from flooding. 

• Dirty Air: According to the WHO, ambient air pollution accounts for an estimated 4.2 million deaths globally per year due to stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, lung cancer, acute and chronic respiratory diseases. Increasing the number of trees in urban areas would help remove these harmful pollutants from the air.

• Urban Heat Islands: The urban heat island effect is a phenomenon that can raise temperatures in cities by as much as 10-15 degrees compared with their surroundings. Additional tree coverage would help limit the urban heat island effect, potentially saving up to 1,300 lives annually.

• Carbon Capture: Trees are one of the most effective tools we have for capturing and storing carbon from the atmosphere. Urban trees alone currently store an estimated 852 million metric tons of carbon. Protecting our existing forests and expanding urban tree coverage would greatly add to this carbon-capturing capacity.