American Forests

1. Place-Based Partnerships: American Forests creates place-based partnerships in cities and forest landscapes so we can work with others to develop enduring, science-based forestry plans that include techniques for adapting to climate change. We advocate for local, state and federal policies and programs — as well as funding to support them — to bring the plans to life. We also plant and care for forests so they are healthy and resilient for generations to come. American Forests works with local partners to create reforestation plans focused on neighborhoods that need trees most and to build capacity in the urban forestry workforce. We have worked in more than 25 cities and are now focused on Detroit, Boston, Phoenix, San Antonio and Rhode Island (a small state that categorizes itself as a large urban forest).

2. Innovation Lab: In our Innovation Lab, American Forests incubates new tools and scientific research to help solve complicated puzzles, empower the forestry field and help forests cope with climate change. For example, we use climate change-informed techniques to boost forest growth after wildfires, and we share data-rich tools to help cities prioritize planting in neighborhoods that need trees the most. These tools include Tree Tree Equity Score and the related Climate & Health Action Guide and Rhode Island species selection guide to help city leaders, urban forestry professionals, and residents look at neighborhood-level scores across a city or region and identify where resources should be focused in order to close any gap in tree cover between neighborhoods.

3. Movement-Building: American Forests builds movements that inspire and empower actions at a large scale — such as the creation of new reforestation policies. Many of our projects focus on fulfilling the two pledges we have made as part of the 1t.org US Chapter, which we lead with the World Economic Forum. We have pledged to plant 100 million trees in natural landscapes and 1.2 million in cities across the U.S. by 2030. American Forests shapes new urban forestry and climate justice policies in a variety of ways, including through Vibrant Cities Lab, the preeminent online resource for urban forestry research, tools and case studies. We helped create the site and now manage it with the United States Forest Service. We also helped launch the Urban and Community Forest Working Group of the U.S. chapter of 1t.org to advance climate resiliency and equity in urban forestry.

We have a dedicated program staff of over 60 individuals, who are located from California, to Michigan, to Montana, and beyond. They are responsible for gathering seeds in remote forests, building movements with BIPOC-led and serving organizations in urbanized areas, and developing new GIS-based tools to inform mass-scale policy decisions. Their passion, knowledge, and skills drives our Resilient Forests and Tree Equity programs forward to meet the complex, evolving needs that the nation and globe have for climate informed forestry and reforestation.

Although we have planted more than 65 million trees since 1990 to mitigate the effects of climate change and bring Tree Equity to all Americans, we define our success by more than the number of trees we have planted. For us, our success rests upon several metrics, internally and externally defined, that tell us if we are moving the needle in 1) the fight for racial and social equity, and 2) the fight against climate change. If what we are doing isn’t affecting both of these mission critical areas, then we retool our programming to scale our impact and live our values.