Talking Trees: An Urban Forestry Toolkit for Local Governments

This is a toolkit designed to provide knowledge on the benefits of urban and community forestry along with policy guidelines to enable municipalities to move toward sustainability.

Local governments across the United States are recognizing the shared importance and the interconnectedness of their social, economic, and environmental goals. Many have been developing active programs and policies to improve the sustainability of their operations and the communities they govern. Urban forestry offers a set of opportunities for creating a wide range of community benefits.

Healthy urban forests can help municipalities achieve goals of environmental, social, and economic sustainability while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere. The urban landscape can be understood as an urban ecosystem, with each part relating to and affecting the whole. The urban forest functions in this urban ecosystem by mitigating harmful environmental issues, such as air and water pollution. It also functions as a location for recreation and escape from the stresses of urban life. By shading and sheltering buildings, trees reduce cooling and heating costs and, simultaneously, greenhouse gas emissions. Even in urban settings, our health and welfare can benefit from exposure to natural settings. The benefits of urban trees are many.

This toolkit is designed to communicate the benefits of the urban forest and provide policy guidelines to enable municipalities to move toward achieving a sustainable urban ecosystem. Fact sheets about carbon dioxide, energy, air quality, water quality and runoff, economics, social benefits, and planting and maintenance describe the various benefits that urban trees provide in a form that is both understandable and informative. These fact sheets are reinforced with a policy guide, three case studies, an assessment of software tools, and a protocol that will better illustrate how cities can achieve healthy urban forests.

This document and the emissions quantification protocols presented here in are designed to complement the emissions analysis protocols that underlie the foundation of ICLEI's Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign.

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