Vegetal Infrastructure

Planting trees has become a global obsession. Forest restoration and afforestation have been rebranded as 'nature-based solutions' to climate change. Nations, corporations and non-profits together aim to plant trillions of trees, roughly equivalent to a new Amazon. This article considers t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Clay, Nathan|||0000-0001-5218-206X
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2026
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:dnet:uabarcelona_::4814ff78de358ad1f6aa4a1f9a702927
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/327886
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1111/geoj.70080
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Adaptation
Afforestation
Climate change
Nature-based solution
Restoration
Tree planting
Descripción
Sumario:Planting trees has become a global obsession. Forest restoration and afforestation have been rebranded as 'nature-based solutions' to climate change. Nations, corporations and non-profits together aim to plant trillions of trees, roughly equivalent to a new Amazon. This article considers the local implications of this terrestrial transformation. It reports on empirical findings from Rwanda, where over fifty million trees-mostly eucalyptus species-have been planted during the past fifteen years. Based on fieldwork with four rural communities, I demonstrate how the material properties of eucalyptus intersect with state and market rationales to make tree planting profitable, scalable and legible. Building from geographic thinking on infrastructure and human-plant relations, I develop the concept of vegetal infrastructure to analyse how trees are enrolled in political projects, producing durable inequalities that become a palpable fixture on the landscape. The article emphasises the urgent need to diversify global reforestation mandates and offers vegetal infrastructure as a lens to assess their local implications.