TEP Conference - Trees: the key to climate proofing our cities
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Temperatures in UK cities are predicted to rise by 3–7°C by the end of the century. Research indicates that a 10% increase in urban tree cover would completely neutralise this impact. According to the Trees in Towns II study trees are being lost at an alarming rate and urban deforestation is offering a hot future for city life.
With better co-ordination, within existing government guidance and management mechanisms, it is possible to achieve the level of canopy cover that will make the difference. This requires a strategy that, wherever possible, all large trees are conserved and planning and design ensures that we grow trees successfully to become big trees with big canopies.
This pioneering conference brought together a wide range of speakers to explore practical possibilities to reverse tree loss within the current planning framework. Our aim is to drive an initiative to achieve the required canopy increase. This can be done but only through the widest possible involvement between all relevant stakeholders, professions, government organisations, citizens groups, etc.
Please continue to provide us with your advice and ideas by using the comment box below. I invite you to become stake holders in this process by contributing to the blog.
Neville Fay, Principal Consultant TEP
TEP organised this landmark conference on behalf of the National Tree Safety Group (TSG), an inclusive association of stakeholders concerned with tree care, ownership, management and advice, formed with strong leadership from the Forestry Commission. Its intention is to develop an industry statement to guide all concerned.
The conference brought together a representative sample of some 300 people involved with trees. Speakers provided ten-minute presentations from the perspective of risk and tree professionals, governmental and non-governmental agencies, local authorities, the concerned citizen, the insurance industry, the legal sector and environmental science.
The key sessions focussed on what it means to be a stakeholder, balancing the benefits and enjoyment of trees with managing an acceptable level of risk. The structure of the conference allowed each speaker to make a statement from their respective stakeholder position. This brought out certain issues where, through clarification, debate and engaging an ever-widening group of stakeholders, there is potential for arriving at a national industry statement that will help the courts and assist managers, landowners and advisers to make risk management decisions for the benefit of a sustainable tree population.
At the end of each session a voting system was used to draw out particular threads relating to reasons for tree management and concerns associated with different sectors. This data will be considered by Prof. David Ball in a research project into the real and perceived aspects of tree risk, as a basis for informing future guidance for those involved in managing trees for public safety.
Neville started proceedings, stating that morphology is likely to have passed us by in our training years but that, by understanding a tree’s form and processes we will increase our understanding and diagnostic skills. The aim is therefore to inform our work, and for TEP this is especially relevant with veteran trees.
By appreciating and enjoying these adaptations we can learn to challenge traditional concepts of form and formality. What was once considered valueless tells a tale of history and regeneration, once our eyes are unlocked. This applies not just to the ancient pollard but also the less conventionally perfect specimen, rarely allowed to survive in a heavily managed tree population (I put a good part of the blame for this on the British Standards for nursery stock! It seemed such a good idea at the time…but then so did dead wooding and heavy thinning and hopefully we have educated ourselves out of that).
Neville then introduced the legendary Professor Francis Hallé, Professor of Botany at the University of Montpellier. Famous for landing inflatable contraptions on the canopy of tropical rainforest trees and having worked in that environment for 40 years, his first session was a historical approach to tree architecture, paying tribute to the British and European tradition of scientific tree drawing from the 16th – 18th centuries.