What are Nature-based Climate Solutions?

Nature-based climate solutions are strategies that leverage the potential of natural carbon sinks such as forests and wetlands to help remove some of the carbon dioxide from the air. In addition to mitigating the impacts of climate change, these natural solutions contribute to restoration of local ecosystem services bringing countless benefits including improved water quality, temperature regulation, better air quality, flood prevention, runoff control, and enhanced biodiversity.

 

Why Pocket Forests?

The world’s forests absorb around 15.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That is great but how many of us have the ability to create a big forest in our backyard? So, we plant trees and that is great but a network of connected green spaces creates stronger natural buffers that can collectively store more carbon and filter air more effectively than single scattered trees. We have a scientific solution that is simple to implement and effective to rely on - the genius of Miyawaki Forests!

 

What is a Miyawaki Forest?

A Miyawaki Forest is a community of densely planted, diverse, and native vegetation configured in a multilayered structure to mimic a native forest ecosystem at an accelerated growth rate. These dense pocket forests are named after Dr. Akira Miyawaki who developed this method of planting forests in the 1970s by building upon the concepts of climax vegetation as well as potential natural vegetation, a legacy of Reinhold Tuxen in the 1950s.

 

The genius technique of Miyawaki promises nearly 10 times faster growth than conventional forestation methods, allowing the creation of a fully mature native forest in merely 20 to 30 years (as opposed to 150 to 200 years). The density of the plantation suggests the potential for 30 to 40 times higher rate of carbon uptake during the process of natural ecological succession of the forest. At 4 years of growth, these forests reach 5 to 7 meters in height and are capable of sequestering 3 kg CO2 per year per square meter (compared to ~0.1 kg CO2 per year for a traditional forest). 

 

A great feature of these pocket forests is that they can be created in areas as small as 100 square feet (hence the term pocket forest)! This directly impacts the capacity of any organization or individual to offset their emissions on their own property!

 

The key, however, is the diversity of species. There are about 30 native species brought together in each Miyawaki forest that are adapted to the environmental conditions of the site and to the competitive relations among the elements of vegetation. This intentional arrangement not only supports the biodiversity of native wildlife but also contributes to the faster growth rate of the forest and its successful establishment. What’s more, it also established an ecosystem that requires minimum to no maintenance and management after the first three years.