Under the European Green Deal, the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 commits to planting at least 3 billion additional trees in the EU by 2030.
To assist in keeping track and count of all these trees, the European Commission and European Environment Agency (EEA) have launched a tree-counting tool called Map My Tree.
The tree-planting pledge will not only increase the EU forest area, but it will also increase its resilience, its biodiversity, as well as help with climate-change mitigation and adaptation.
Map My Tree is now open for organisations to engage with, and tree reporting can commence at any time.
According to the website, this tree planting target requires successful collaboration of various stakeholders from individual citizens and landowners to nurseries, associations, companies and public authorities.
More information can be found here.
Ireland
According to land cover and change statistics 2000-2018 provided by the EEA, in Ireland, forest-tree cover makes up 10.51% or 727,633ha of the total country area. That is 0.15ha per capita.
The main land cover and land use classes are: agriculture areas; artificial areas; forests; semi-natural areas; wetlands; water bodies.
Forests are a key part of the solution to combat climate change and biodiversity loss and the 3 billion trees target will be carried out with a long-term planning and monitoring scheme ensuring that the trees are planted, and allowed to grow over time, the commission said.
Only trees that benefit biodiversity and the climate, and that are additional, can be registered on the platform.