Key Takeaways from Urban Forests: Forest Urbanism & Global Warming Conference 2022 and the Application to Bangkok’s One Million Trees Project

Abstract

One Million Trees project is a method for environmental impact mitigation and carbon reduction for cities. It started from the One Million Trees Project in Los Angeles in 2006 and became One Million Trees Movement as a mission to fight climate change in many cities around the world. Bangkok, Thailand has also adopted the One Million Trees project. Bangkok plans to plant more trees equally in every district of the city starting in 2022. Although tree planting and creating urban forests are important tools for a Nature-based solution and a pivotal method for climate crisis, it is important to recognize urban tree planting requires considerable planning in addition to multitude other factors. Planting large numbers of new trees or high density of trees in a short period of time may not be the solution for urban environmental issues.  Planting more trees without the proper planning and not having a proper understanding of planting sites can both adversely affect the urban ecology as well as the wellbeing of the city in short term and long term. The lack of an appropriate maintenance plan and an insufficient maintenance budget can also affect the health of the trees which could be a potential liability in public spaces. This paper is an accumulation, analysis, and summary of what was taken away from the Conference on Urban Forests: Forest Urbanism & Global Warming (UFFU Conference 2022) in June 2022 in Belgium by analyzing and summarizing key messages from the talks, presentations, discussions, and sharing with researchers, designers, foresters, botanists, and experts from the field. It also proposes primary methods that could be beneficial for Bangkok’s One Million Tree project and Urban Forest Plan.