TREE Fund announced a free webinar to be held September 12 at Noon CDT. The webinar, on the topic of “Identifying social barriers to equitable tree planting and quantifying potential benefits to overcoming them,” will be presented by Lindsay Darling from the Center for Tree Science at the Morton Arboretum.
The urban forest is not equitably distributed, with under-resourced communities receiving fewer benefits from trees than more affluent ones. Recently, governmental and green organizations have made the reduction of this inequity one of their primary goals, but these efforts often do not garner buy-in from their intended communities, and consequently fail to achieve their objectives. This is in part because these organizations are frequently outsiders to the communities where they work and do not understand the social barriers or concerns that residents may have towards greening efforts.
This presentation will describe surveys that were administered to Chicago-area residents and greening organizations that identified barriers that residents experienced when planting trees. We found that while residents generally appreciated the benefits that trees provide, interest in planting more trees was more strongly related to their perceptions of existing neighborhood conditions than with socio-demographic conditions. We will also describe strategies that greening organizations may employ to better address tree equity.
ISA and SAF continuing education units will be available for watching the entire live broadcast. Get more information about this webinar and watch any previous TREE Fund webinars at treefund.org/webinars.