Urban Tree Cover
Surprisingly, with 21% tree cover and over 8.4 urban million trees, London could be classified as a forest under UN definition!
The capital's urban trees remove and transmute around 2,260 tonnes of airborne pollution a year and create a haven for over 14,000 species of biodiversity within all the city's ecosystems.
The mayor of London has pledged to increase tree canopy cover by 10% and for the capital to be 50% green or blue space by 2050. This all sounds really encouraging, but implementation and practicality is another story.
Maybe we need a blend of micro and macro projects, where larger areas of indigenous forest can be created and rapidly established - replacing large mono culture grassed areas with biodiversity rich forest biomes and turning unused abandoned land into vibrant forest for the benefit of local communities.
Small rewilding projects, such as the example below we created in central London last year, should be backed to spring up where ever there is a potential pocket of available urban space. The areas can multiply to form urban biodiversity corridors and bring local benefits such as storm water processing, Co2 capture and lowering of ambient temperatures.
