MEMO: Urban Trees: A Tool for Improving Health, Climate, and the Economy

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

Trees and forests are essential for taking on the damaging effects of the climate crisis and for maintaining healthy communities and ecosystems. President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda would make once-in-a-generation investments to support forestry and tree-planting programs and initiatives that are key to making our communities more resilient to extreme weather and building up the critical green infrastructure we need to take on climate change.

With climate change-driven extreme weather and disasters becoming increasingly common, the Sierra Club once again calls on Senators to come to the table, advance the Build Back Better agenda, and act on our climate before it’s too late. 

As negotiations around the Build Back Better agenda resume, Senators agree we must invest in green infrastructure to take on climate change and help us reach net-zero by 2050. Urban trees alone currently store an estimated 852 million metric tons of carbon, and the proposed investments in forestry programs could plant an estimated 38 million trees nationwide. With tree planting playing an essential role in achieving that goal, Sierra Club is calling on Senators to back critical investments in these programs. 

Tree Planting and Urban Forests are Essential for Taking on the Climate Crisis

Congress must support much-needed investments in the following programs that support green space development and community tree planting:

• $2.5 billion for the Urban and Community Forestry Assistance Program: Tree planting in urban communities decrease the effects of the climate crisis by increasing tree canopy cover within these neighborhoods, mitigating the urban heat island effect, which can raise temperatures in cities by as much as 10-15 degrees over surrounding areas. More than 200 million people in more than 7,700 communities across the U.S. currently benefit from this program through the development and maintenance of local urban forestry programs. 

• $100 million for Urban Parks through the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program: Communities of color are three times less likely to have access to nearby nature than white neighborhoods, and the parks and green spaces in wealthier neighborhoods are often 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.

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

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: Protecting existing and expanding new forests and green spaces builds up the green infrastructure needed to abate more frequent and heavier rainfall and related flooding, higher sea levels, and more frequent and more powerful hurricanes. 

• Dirty Air: Trees can help address the ambient air pollution that 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.

• Urban Heat Islands: Additional tree coverage would help limit the urban heat island effect, potentially saving up to 1,300 lives annually.

• Carbon Capture: Protecting our existing forests and expanding urban tree coverage would greatly add to this carbon-capturing capacity.