Talking Trees: Integrating Urban Forestry into Local Government's Sustainability and Emissions Reduction Initiatives (05-DG-11052021-097)

This project worked closely with local governments and forestry experts to develop a toolkit of outreach materials to assist in local decision making reguarding urban forestry as a component of their emissions reduction and sustainability programs.

Through the Talking Trees: Integrating Urban Forestry into Local Governments' Sustainability and Emissions Reduction Initiatives project, ICLEI has worked closely with a group of local governments and forestry experts to develop and distribute a toolkit of outreach materials and tools to help local jurisdictions consider and include urban forestry as a component of their emissions reduction and sustainability programs. This toolkit includes fact sheets geared to a local government audience, case studies on successful urban forestry programs, guidance on including urban forestry in local emissions reduction plans, a resource guide, and a review of tools currently available to quantify the benefits that urban trees provide. This toolkit has been distributed to ICLEI's national network of local governments and debuted at a series of training sessions to educate local governments on the benefits of urban forestry. The toolkit is available on both of ICLEI's websites: www.iclei.org/usa and www.coolmayors.org as well as upon request.

Project objectives:

ICLEI's local government members frequently inquire about the proper method for accounting for the effects of urban tree cover and changes in tree cover within any jurisdiction's local climate protection plans. These local government practitioners need information on the tangible ways that urban forestry benefits local communities and relates to broader sustainability goals. The Talking Trees project has ad-dressed this need by assisting jurisdictions in integrating, quantitatively and qualitatively, urban forestry into their emissions reduction and sustainability plans.

The objectives of the Talking Trees project were to:

•Bring information to a wide distribution of local governments to raise awareness of the benefits that urban trees provide in terms of carbon storage and sequestration, air pollution removal, energy savings, water runoff, and increasing social and economic sustainability.

•Develop a toolkit aimed specifically at the local government audience that provides leaders with the resources needed to make informed decisions about tree cover in their communities.

•Aid local governments in quantifying the impacts of their urban forestry decisions so that tree cover considerations can be better integrated into jurisdictions' emissions reduction and sustainability programs.

Attachments

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