Standing atop an old landfill, Francis Allard is in his element. Mr Allard is co-founder of Ramo, whose business plants willows and poplars to help remediate landfills, mines and marginal lands. At the Ste-Sophie landfill north of Montreal, the company grows willows to treat leachate from areas of the facility that were closed decades ago. Ramo harvests the trees every few years, weaving them into a variety of products, including fences and sound barriers. It is also establishing a plantation in northern Quebec to provide soil amendments for reclamation at nearby mines. But Mr Allard’s mood darkens again at Ramo’s new $7 million willow nursery nearby. Half of this was paid for using funding from the federal government’s 2 Billion Trees program (2BT for short). Mr. Allard, an early believer in the program, increased Ramo’s ability to meet the expected increase in demand. He is grateful for the support. But he’s nervously awaiting Ottawa’s response to the 2023 planting projects Ramo proposed in February. The clock is ticking: To properly prepare the plantations, he says, he will need to hear by the end of summer at the latest. “We’ve had some funding to do some projects, but not to the level we expected,” Mr Allard said. Although it’s off to a slow start, 2BT is ambitious. Over a decade, the federal government plans to spend more than $3 billion to encourage provinces, territories, indigenous groups, nonprofits, landowners and others to create new forests. These would cover 1.1 million hectares, an area twice the size of Prince Edward Island. The government plans to rely heavily on these trees to help reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions and estimates they will sequester 12 megatonnes per year by mid-century. An internal document obtained through the Access to Information Act said “there is no path to net zero emissions that does not involve our forests”. According to Natural Resources Canada, which manages 2BT, more than 500 million seedlings are planted annually. From 2026 to 2030, the program aims to plant another 300 million per year. An entire supply chain must accommodate this: seed collectors, tree nurseries and boots on the ground to plant them. Several landowners must also agree to convert large tracts of land into permanent forest. “We can expand our overall capacity,” said Rob Keen, chief executive of Forests Ontario, which has planted tens of millions of trees. “But what we need is that long-term, sustainable funding to know that the investments will pay off.” Tree planting in Middlesex County. Willows in a dump: Probably not what most envisioned when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced 2BT in 2019. Indeed, the program has come under fire for funding shrubs that look nothing like pines or oaks. But such majestic trees take years to grow a few feet, while willows can grow that tall in a matter of months. And they can be planted much more densely than most species, up to 16,000 per hectare. “We’re probably the only kind of project that’s ready to go,” Mr Allard said. 2BT has been heavily criticized for planting just 29 million trees in its first season. PRT Growing Services Ltd. based in Victoria is a major supplier of seedlings: it can grow 330 million seedlings annually in North America. CEO Randy Fournier said many of his customers are eager to take advantage of 2BT. But currently, it’s “almost not even visible on the radar.” By far the largest 2BT contribution announced to date – $32 million – went to Quebec’s forestry ministry. Representative Sylvain Carrier said the money (the final amount is expected to be $26 million) was earmarked for planting seven million trees in public forests (mostly in areas burned by wildfires) and another five million on private lands (most of which were destroyed by insect infestations. ). The city of Montreal has allocated more than $5 million to plant hundreds of thousands of trees to reduce its vulnerability to heat waves and manage the ravages of the emerald ash borer, which has killed tens of thousands of its inhabitants. Meanwhile, the BC government received nearly $3 million. Sources interviewed by The Globe and Mail were divided on how quickly Canada’s supply chain can respond. PRT’s Mr Fournier said his company can’t deliver 100,000 spruce seedlings tomorrow, but can bulk up in just 12 months. “As the development of 2BT accelerates, there is absolutely no reason for the seedling supply chain to be adversely affected,” he said. “The capacity is absolutely there.” But not all planting applications can use seedlings grown on such strict schedules. At the opposite extreme are mature trees used in urban settings: Michael Rosen, a consultant and former president of Tree Canada, a non-profit organization that plans in urban areas, said urban forest departments require specimens up to twelve years old. “It takes a long time for a tree to grow to this size,” he said. “The program, I think, only has 10 years of life. So this is a real conundrum.” Daimen Hardie, executive director of Community Forests International, said 2BT would represent a significant change for seed collectors as well. If the program wants to plant resilient forests, it will require a greater variety of species than the forestry companies use in their replantings, he said. Hoping to stimulate investment throughout the supply chain, this year NRCan began accepting multi-year funding proposals. Anne-Hélène Mathey, executive director at NRCan in charge of 2BT, said almost all successful applicants had proposed multi-year projects and almost all had been notified. (They haven’t been publicly announced yet, however, as no formal agreements have been signed.) “Feedback is that this is the right approach, both from nurseries and recipients,” he said. The hardest thing could be finding enough land. Canada it is the second largest country in the world, but tree planting competes with other uses such as agriculture and future municipal development. The most obvious targets of 2BT are previously forested areas that have been severely damaged by fire or insect infestation. But Ottawa also wants to expand forests within cities. Mr. Rosen said many older neighborhoods may be maxed out, but newer neighborhoods and industrial parks have space available. Ramo offers willow planting services. Matthew McClearn/The Globe and Mail Community Forests International has restored more than 1,200 hectares of forest in the Maritimes, which are held in trust to ensure they remain forested forever. “I think land availability is definitely going to be an issue,” Mr Hardy said. “It’s already a challenge for us.” NRCan’s Ms. Mathey said NRCan chose not to require formal guarantees from participants to preserve the new forests because it believed legal agreements would severely limit the program’s appeal. The volume of applications received to date shows that there is sufficient public, agricultural and urban land available to support the development of 2BT, he added. “So far, I would say we have no cause for concern,” he said. Tree planting is fast becoming a popular nature-based solution to climate change. In 2018, the New Zealand government announced plans to plant one billion trees by 2028. Australia followed suit the following year, aiming to plant one billion trees by 2030. Also in 2019, the United States introduced the climate management, which included plans to plant 4.1 billion trees by 2030. Ireland has pledged to extend forests to nearly a fifth of the country by mid-century. In this big numbers game, several realities are worth remembering. Years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that a billion hectares of additional forest would be needed to limit global warming to 1.5C by 2050. The 2BT contribution, if realized, would represent one-tenth of 1 percent of it. And while two PEIs is nothing to be sniffed at, according to the national forest census, Canada’s forests cover nearly 3.5 million square kilometers. According to one estimate, these forests contain 318 billion trees. So if Ottawa plants two billion more, it will have added just 0.6 per cent to that total. Trays of willow cuttings inside the new Ramo willow nursery building in Quebec. Matthew McClearn/The Globe and Mail As these trees become established, more could be harvested or burned. According to the World Resources Institute, a global research organization, Canada lost 2.5 million hectares of forest last year alone. “The rate of loss is significantly higher than the rate of gain that would occur directly through this program,” said Will Anderson, WRI’s director of restoration projects. Boreal forests grow slowly, so there is a real risk that 2BT trees will not stand long enough to provide benefits. Other plants that compete with them for light may need to be removed. During drought, seedlings may even require individual watering to survive. Future owners may cut down the trees. All this points to the need for monitoring and verification. Establishing initial site conditions, monitoring survival rates, and consistently measuring carbon sequestration require careful thought. But this is where many international tree-planting efforts have failed. “The common thread we see, even today, with all the countries we work with, is that they haven’t budgeted or planned for monitoring,” said Dow Martin, who manages landscape restoration mapping and monitoring at World Resources Institute. . Ms Mathey said 2BT had set aside funding for monitoring sites after the scheme ended. “There are all kinds of technologies and techniques available these days, from remote sensing imagery to LiDAR, to ensure – without deploying 3,000 civil servants…
