Synergies of Woe

I secured a speaking spot at the World Urban Parks Asia-Pacific Congress last year before COVID took it away from all of us.  As conferences go, the name was a bit of a mouthful.  The timing was ideal as it started a day after the Asia-Pacific Tree Climbing Competition in Singapore; I could take in the conference on the way home.  Alas, both events did not run, but many carbon miles were saved.  The organisers of the World Urban Parks Asia-Pacific Congress re-scheduled it for this year and it was held a few months ago.  I attended and spoke about the Arbor Day Foundation’s Tree Cities of the World programme.

Tree Cities is all about celebrating trees, acknowledging towns and cities that have a tree planting programme and actually manage their urban trees.  I like it and was pleased to be able to promote it.  At the time I slipped in a few words on iTree, and requested funding partners to help cover the costs of implementation.  iTree is an international database managed through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service.  It’s not just a USA thing with tree species and climatic data from over 130 countries loaded into it. iTree enables the user to create tree metrics on a range of things including carbon sequestration, stormwater interception and air filtration, then put a monetary amount to the ‘services’ the tree or a population of trees provides.  It’s very cool, free to use and I seized the opportunity to talk about it.  To complete the package I linked them both back to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG).  Tree Cities is the what, iTree is the how and UN SDG is the why – urban trees can help cities and countries meet 15 of the 17 UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.  It’s really hard for a government agency to argue against sustainability and the UN, especially after the agency has declared itself a Tree City and we have the ability to scientifically measure the services their trees provide.  It should have been an easy talk to a like-minded green-focused international audience but it didn’t quite work out that way; it wasn’t bad, but it could have been better.  It was just another casualty of COVID.

While at the congress, I was able to mix and mingle with the wider green industry.  It was interesting on a number of levels, firstly there was a free bar and nobody took advantage of it.  That’s not to say that there wasn’t drinking but there wasn’t the gorging that is common at arboricultural events.  It was really quite sobering.  The other thing, which was possibly only apparent because of the first thing, were the synergies of woe.  Synergies of woe, not being an emo band or a book being touted on a day-time television chat show, but the realisation that each sector of the green industry had the same issue and the same set of villains. We are all in the same boat navigating the same sea. You only needed to substitute a few words and the problems turf management has are exactly the same as ornamental gardeners, that perceived risks around playgrounds are the same as for trees.  The similarities were uncanny.  Ornamental gardens cost too much to maintain, so let’s make them smaller and not put in new ones.  In fact, gardens take up too much space so let’s turn them into lawn.  Lawns, of course, are great spaces for infrastructure so let’s dig them up and while we’re at it let’s shrink them so the public doesn’t get their feet wet – you have no idea how much mud gets trapsed inside.  Playgrounds hurt children, they are risky things, every other day there is a letter in the local paper berating playgrounds and highlighting the almost harm that wee Johnny junior nearly suffered.  Playground equipment is poorly maintained and frankly dangerous; why on earth does the Council have them and what’s it going to do to make them safe for our children?  I was surrounded by arborists, but no arborists could be seen (it may have had something to do with the free bar service from the night before, but I could be wrong).   

I had never considered the issues of the wider green industry before, yet the synergies of woe continued.  The instigators of their woe were the same as our woe, developers, transport engineers, the power companies and Mrs Betty Outrage from Entitled Street.  And then there was the in-house fighting; if the foe is too frightening then fight amongst yourselves.  The ornamental gardeners didn’t like the turf guys because they were taking their gardens, the turf guys didn’t like the playground people because they couldn’t keep off the grass and nobody liked the arborists because they soiled everything with leaves and shade.  United we stand, divided we fall.  The insight was enlightening, but I was unsure what to do with my newly discovered knowledge. 

As arborists we maybe guilty of only focusing on what we care about; the solution to preventing mower damage to trees is to remove the turf (keep the mowers away, mulch under the trees).  On the flip side, the solution to preventing mower damage from trees is to remove the trees.  Both solutions are simple but workability completely favours your point of view.  There are a lot of synergies with arboriculture and the rest of the green industry, their problems are our problems too. There is also a lot more of them than there are of us, so it is possible that they have solutions to the problems (or at least know what doesn’t work). The entire green industry faces a common foe so let’s face it together – share the knowledge and make the world a greener place.

• Written for the ARB Magazine (UK)