Forest for All NYC started in 2021 with a goal to expand New York City’s tree canopy up to 30% by 2035 while maintaining the city’s existing coverage. Forest for All is a coalition that brings together around 150 organizations to meet its goal of planting and sustaining trees in an urban environment to combat the climate crisis and restore the earth’s natural assets.

“Forest for All NYC envisions a healthy, biodiverse, robust, accessible, well-understood, and resilient urban forest that justly and equitably delivers its multiple benefits to all residents of New York City and helps the city adapt to and mitigate climate change,” Forest for All says in its Urban Forest Agenda. “Our diverse and inclusive coalition is committed to working together to advance effective and lasting policies, plans, practices, research and investments. Collectively, these actions will help to protect, maintain, use, monitor, understand, promote and expand the New York City urban forest and ensure that its benefits accrue throughout all stages of the life cycle of NYC’s trees.”

Forest for All organizations recognize the importance of trees in an urban environment for their aesthetic, social and ecological benefits, and the coalition wants residents to get involved in preserving, protecting and expanding the urban forest. 

“Forest for All Coalition is about 150 different organizations across different sectors — the nonprofit and private sector, conservation, environmental justice organizations — who really have a point of view that our urban forest is essential to what it means to survive in a city like New York,” said Prospect Park Alliance President Morgan Monaco. “Our shared agenda is to make sure that we protect and maintain our urban forest so that it can be there for future generations and provide the ecosystem services and benefits that we need today and tomorrow.”

Many city dwellers are familiar with aspects of climate change, but many forget to look to the natural world for resources to combat environmental crises. 

“When people talk about climate change, they’re often talking about emissions from buildings, cars, airplanes, but the urban forest plays a really big role in mitigating the impacts of climate change,” said Monaco. “Those other interventions, like capping emissions, converting to solar, converting to wind, are very important, but sometimes it gets lost on people that the natural environment, not just the built environment, has a really important role to play with mitigating the impacts of climate change.”

Forest for All wants New Yorkers to connect with their urban forest and reach the goal of 30% canopy coverage by 2035. To do this, New Yorkers first need to know the value of trees to the city.