This blog is in English and covers 2 weeks , of which most of the time was spend in Italy as the content may be of interest to our foreign friends and partners.
The week before the trip everything was aimed at getting all projects prepared . For the vegetable gardens it meant a lot of weeding. In the greenhouses the dense stands of tomatoes and other species were sorted out so they would have proper space to grow; for tomatoes, cucumber, beans and tomatillos, this also meant that each ‘chosen’ plant would be offered a single piece of rope around which it could grow to the ceiling. In total we had prepared about 4000- 6000 ropes for this purpose.
The trip to Italy was undertaken with similar motives as the trip in March to Ireland, Scotland and England: The ecological mismanagement of the earth cannot be repaired in the Netherlands alone. It needs to happen globally. Considering we have the project nicely on the rail in the Netherlands with 1.6 million trees saved and distributed in 3 seasons, we thought it is time to expand to Europe. In order to get the necessary momentum for the Moretrees.now approach in the EU Climate policy, we want to increase the number of countries involved and participating. Germany joined in January 2023 ,a kick start is planned in November 2023 in Ireland, Scotland and England and a visit to Italy (and France) was meant to broaden the base of participating countries. We do not have the capacity to kick start in 5 new countries at the same time, moreover for Italy and France another factor needs to be considered : the climatic conditions in the Mediterranean zone are quite different to those in NW Europe. There are 2 main differences: the winter season is less severe, so the trees are less in hibernation (at rest) and the summer conditions are harsher in the sense that a 5 months blistering summer period may be hard to survive for saplings with naked roots. Thus for the Italian case our main objectives have been to find local partners and to first conduct some trees survival studies before we go nationwide.
From 3 months before the trip, contacts were established with ‘17 tons’: an Italian benefit company . This name comes from the calculated need that 17 tons of CO2 per year per person would need to be removed to solve the climate problem. ‘17 ton’s focuses on a carbon credit offsetting based business model for companies including follow up verification monitoring and evaluation. Their operativity is quite complementary to our approach. It is also thanks to their network that we managed to make contacts with Lega Ambiente Umbria and several tree nurseries. Lega Ambiente Italy has 500 volunteer and professional groups that perform various activities, amongst which the planting of 5 million trees. Most of these trees are seeded or obtained from nurseries. The MoreTrees.Now approach is quite complementary to these activities as well. In Italy planting Paulownia seems to offer some promises, too. This tree from China is a CO2 fixing champion that can grow 5m per year and can create a trunk of 25 cm diameter in 5 years. In Holland this heat loving trees survives, but grows much slower. The Paulownia is also used as a shade tree under which other species can establish themselves more efficiently. We also did an on the job training about tree harvesting. This resulted in about 80 saplings of 17 species in less than an 1 hour. In a farm based in Umbria these saplings will be used in a trial to get a feeling concerning the survival rate. Other trials will be undertaken as well under various conditions with and without irrigation.
While harvesting we documented the process through several videos in Italian that can be used for a national campaign and for the website. We brainstormed about a possible Italian name for the moretree.now campaign; we came up with PiuAlbori.Ora. When ready to launch it we will ask to the volunteers to propose more Italian translations of the MoreTrees.Now expression and then we will ask for preferences. We also managed to get a flyer in Italian that will be soon available on our socials and website for download . For now PiuAlbori.Ora results abbreviated in the acronym “PAO” that gives a well deserved energetic touch to the positive energy that is key to what we do. Let’s see how the name will transform involving more Italian volunteers!
The tree harvest activities were mixed with small jobs aimed to manage together the common hosting place. We also enjoyed many interesting trips to cultural, geological and recreational sites. It has been a wonderful group building experiment that lasted 9 days . Back in Holland weeding and harvesting of vegetables dominated within 2 hours of coming back home.
One of our team split off earlier and visited several meetings in Paris to see if we could cross fertilize with the MoreTrees.Now approach one of the many French tree planting initiatives. One of the most interesting ones could be the sustainability initiatives around the 2026 Olympic games. We will see what happens when the method will be verified and more volunteers and partners will join in. For now a huge thanks to all the ones supporting the MoreTrees.Now development.
Franke van der Laan
Stichting MEERGroen
Meerbomen.n
Climate Mayor Haarlemmermeer 2021, 2022, 2023