The bad news: Planting trees in cities won’t save us from climate change.

The good news: Even though planting city trees won’t save us from climate change, it can help our most vulnerable communities adapt to its impacts. (To be clear, planting trees in forests won’t save us from climate change, either, but apparently it’s easier to do that than to just… reduce fossil fuel emissions.)

As cities around the world shore up their plans for urban forests and mass tree-planting initiatives gain traction, it’s hard to hear that these efforts are ineffective in the fight against climate change.

I’m a budding ecologist, enthusiastic tree hugger, and member of a generation staring down the barrel of unavoidable climate catastrophe. I want to hear good news as much as anyone–in fact, I started writing about urban forestry because it seemed like a beacon of hope amid a sea of depressing environmental news.

I desperately want to believe that planting trees is the answer to climate change. But recent research shows that, despite the fact that city trees do store carbon and absorb airborne particulates, city trees can’t save us from climate change or air pollution. This was surprising to me—so many arguments in favor of planting city trees focus on the capacity of urban forests to remove carbon, or their ability to reduce air pollution. These functions of city trees are what make them attractive climate mitigation solutions. But, as it turns out, urban forests aren’t cut out for the job.

The problem is a practical one: there isn’t enough room for trees in cities, nor enough time for them to grow. This means that no matter how much carbon or particulate matter a tree planted in a city takes up, it won’t make a dent in the huge amount of emissions and pollution generated by that city. A few trees here and there can’t keep up.

Seems bleak, right? Yes, but here’s the important thing: planting more trees in urban areas, though it can’t stop climate change, can definitely help adapt to its impacts as well as reduce tree inequity.

Implementing nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation must be a crucial component of achieving climate justice—ensuring that the communities who contribute least to climate change aren’t the ones who suffer the most from it.

Centuries of oppression against Black and Indigenous people of color have culminated in the unequal distribution of neighborhood trees we see today (as well as nearly every other case of environmental racism). Historical redlining and segregation have left low-income communities of color with far fewer trees and a lot more heat than their white and wealthy neighbors. Tree inequity today didn’t happen overnight—it’s the inevitable outcome of racist housing policies, rooted in systemic oppression, that perpetuated the race and class privilege we see today.

Increasing tree canopy cover by planting more trees in disadvantaged neighborhoods is crucial for achieving climate justice and adapting to the worst effects of climate change. Image credit: Jordan Wong

This is where climate adaptation comes in, and it’s here that urban forestry offers its most meaningful benefits. Rising temperatures, exacerbated by the urban heat island effect, and more frequent natural disasters are some of the best-known effects of climate change. Planting trees in strategic locations can help to cool hot neighborhoods, avert stormwater runoff, and provide health benefits to residents beyond just reducing pollution. These represent tangible, local-scale climate adaptation strategies to help build resilience in the communities that need it the most.

Beyond building cities that are resilient to the impacts of climate change, I find hope in the idea that taking care of our urban forests can take us one step closer to taking care of our planet and one another.

Where does this hopeful path lead? I look to speculative science fiction for inspiration when real life seems too bleak—like the lush greenery and futuristic skyscrapers of Wakanda’s capital city in Marvel’s Black Panther. In these fictional societies, humanity has proven itself capable of living within our ecological limits with the help of technology, and even managed to heal the land we live on.

For those of us sadly living here in reality with a shortage of advanced sci-fi technology, utilizing urban forestry for climate adaptation is relatively low-hanging fruit. Taking care of our urban forests certainly isn’t the only thing we need to do, but it can be our first step toward an environmentally just future.