Plant a tree every day

Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?

On a hot morning in April, near the start of Brazil’s dry season,
four women and two men walked single file across a sodden field at the edge of Engenho,
a village in the northern part of Goiás State.

They wore long sleeves and wide-brimmed hats to protect against the sun, and leather gaiters and gloves to protect against snakes.

In a plastic tub, they carried an entire forest.

The women and men who made up this team of tree planters were all Kalunga, descendants of enslaved people who centuries ago fled into the Brazilian cerrado,
the vast region of grasslands, savannas and open woodlands that covers much of the country’s southern half.

Nestled amid Goiás’s forbidding mesas, Kalunga villages remained largely isolated from the outside world until the 1980s. Anthropologists arrived first, then teachers.

The planting team’s leader, Damião Santos, a trim, meditative man of 37 years, remembers when the first tourists showed up, attracted by nearby waterfalls.

More and more, clay tiles and brick were used as building materials in place of the traditional spars and fronds of the buriti palm.

Electricity came to the village.

Then, a year ago, an organization appeared in the region, offering trees.

 Source: The New York Times Magazine