Report
10th September 2023
3 minute read
Trees
At Just a Drop, across our safe water, improved hygiene and better sanitation programme, it’s key that the solutions we provide are fully sustainable, achieving long-term impact.
An important part of this sustainability pledge is the provision we make to support the local environment surrounding our projects. One of the many ways we do this is by planting trees where we work.
Watersheds
One of the key impacts tree planting has is helping an environment’s water cycle, by preserving and protecting watersheds. A watershed is the area of land surrounding a river, from which rainwater and surface water run-off into the river.
As the trees we plant absorb water through their roots, less rainwater is drained immediately into the river and more is stored in the soil surrounding the trees. This has multiple benefits including reducing soil erosion, improving soil quality, and reducing the risk of flooding.
Community and Economic Benefits
As we plant a diverse variety of trees, farmers and communities gain access to more resources. Trees provide shade for plants, as well as fruit and food and medicinal resources.
Due to reduced spending on expensive resources like medicine and foodstuffs, communities and households have more income available to spend on other essentials to improve their quality of life. Food from the trees can also produce surpluses which can be sold for income.
With training on planting climate-suitable trees and crops, alongside sustainable farming techniques, communities are able to grow plants and food which can thrive.
Health Benefits
Trees bring a number of changes to their surrounding environment which make it more suitable for growing a variety of plants and crops. Due to their improvent of soil fertility and their reduction of soil erosion, most plants are helped by the presence of trees.
Improved shade and protection from wind naturally also help plants and crops to grow, leading to health benefits for communities from the food they produce. The trees’ food improves diet and lifestyle.
Carbon Benefits
The trees we plant have the added benefit of naturally ‘sequestering’ carbon from the atmosphere. As trees use carbon dioxide, they remove carbon from the atmosphere simply by being alive.
Different trees sequester different amounts of carbon per year and for a healthy adult tree, we usually assume that it would sequester around 25kg of CO₂ per year. This means that planting trees has the added bonus of offsetting some of the carbon that has been produced from our projects.
Last year, this helped us to offset more carbon than we emitted, making us carbon neutral for the period.
