Making the business case for trees in your community

A tree-lined neighbourhood and an urban forest is easy to admire. Their value, however, can be much harder to articulate in front of a council table given the many services and priorities communities must balance.

In communities facing heat waves, extreme storms, flooding, housing pressures and limited budgets, trees are far more than a beautification project. They support public health, reduce flooding, improve air quality, provide shade, store carbon, bolster biodiversity and strengthen community well-being — the list goes on. 

Roy Brooke

Executive Director, Natural Assets Initiative

Joanna Eyquem

Managing Director, Climate Resilient Infrastructure, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation

Barb Rabicki

Principal Owner, Wild by Nature Forest Sanctuary

Dr. Laurette Geldenhuys

Board Member, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

For Roy Brooke, Executive Director of Natural Assets Initiative, municipalities need to rethink how they approach nature. As he explains it, natural asset management helps local governments understand, account for and manage nature as part of resilient infrastructure systems. “If you don't do the work to understand those services, then you [make] decisions that are faulty,” Brooke says. 

Trees provide services municipalities already rely on

Brooke describes trees and ecosystems as providing services communities depend on, even if those services are not yet fully recognized in municipal decision-making. For example, a forest, a park or even a group of trees can help with stormwater management, drinking water filtration, flood risk reduction and recreation, he says. 
 

When the services natural infrastructure provides are not understood, it can lead to expensive decisions. Brooke says municipalities may overbuild engineered assets simply because they did not ask what nature was already doing.

Joanna Eyquem, Managing Director, Climate-Resilient Infrastructure at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, is a geoscientist, and sees trees as part of a broader system, not as isolated features. Tree roots, she explains, can help hold riverbanks together, while deforested areas can worsen flood risks. Trees, in that view, are tied directly to how water moves through a landscape. “They are part of a natural balance, we need to make space for them in the processes that they provide,” Eyquem says. 
 

The business case starts with knowing what you have

To make the case for investment, experts return to one starting point: inventory.

Brooke says municipalities need to know which natural assets they own or rely on, what condition those assets are in and what risks they face. Or, in the words of Barb Rabicki, Principal Owner of Wild by Nature Forest Sanctuary: “you need to know what you got in order to figure out where you need to go.”

Rabicki has held urban forestry roles with municipalities including Burlington, Markham and Hamilton, ON. She has also planted more than 1,000 native trees and shrubs at Wild by Nature Forest Sanctuary.

In her experience, when it comes to convincing councils to invest in urban forests, the financial case matters. “If you can put something in front of them that says, ‘this is the value of your urban forest, or this is the value of this tree,’ — they get it,” she says. 

Eyquem points to Montreal’s blue tag program as one example of making tree values unmistakable. Bright blue tags attached to specific trees list benefits such as carbon capture, stormwater management and air pollution reduction. For example, one older ginkgo tree provides about $18,000 per year in services, she says.

“It's important to understand: money talks,” Rabicki says.

Trees are part of public health

For Dr. Laurette Geldenhuys, Board Member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and Professor at Dalhousie University, trees also belong in the health conversation. She points to the cross-Canada ‘park prescriptions’ program, which allows healthcare professionals to prescribe time in nature: “at least two hours in nature each week, with at least 20 minutes each time.”

According to Geldenhuys, studies have shown that time in nature improves cardiovascular and pulmonary health, reduces moderate anxiety and depression and improves attention in youth with moderate ADHD. She also references the 3-30-300 rule: at least three well-established trees in view from every home, school and workplace; at least 30 per cent tree canopy in every neighbourhood; and no more than 300 metres to the nearest public green space from every residence.

Start small, but make the benefits visible

For municipalities that lack staff, resources or technical expertise, speakers emphasize that getting started does not require solving everything at once.

Rabicki recommends breaking goals into “bite-sized chunks,” starting with something like a community tree planting and working with local organizations or volunteers. Those partners, she says, can bring expertise and carry weight with councils.

Eyquem encourages municipalities to look for multiple benefits. Planting a tree can be valuable on its own, she says, but it may be “multiply beneficial” if it also helps reduce flooding or provides shade in a vulnerable community; as Geldenhuys says, some studies show tree-shaded surfaces are between 11 and 25 degrees Celsius cooler than peak temperatures in unshaded ones. 

As Rabicki puts it, this is “bigger than just pretty trees in the ground.”

This article shares key takeaways from “The Business Case for Planting Trees,” a past webinar hosted by GMF. 

Watch the webinar