March is a busy month!
Around the world, March is known as ‘Women’s Month’.
The last few posts have shared some events that celebrate female achievements and raise awareness for women, gender and social justice issues, such as Women’s History Month (Royal Australia Historical Society, Dr Katie Phillips (USA) and Dr Kat Jungnickel (UK) as well the Brisbane chapter of one of the Australian Women’s March4Justice protests – which I attended in appropriate bike-based attire, replete with a dual-sided (inclusive-confrontational) homemade sign.
But not many people know that March 21st was the UN International Day of Forests.
So to commemorate both Women’s Month and Day of the Forests, I put the call out to three inspiring female friends (Nix, Alex and Wendy) who work to improve gender and environmental imperatives – and invited them to come for a night-time ride along our bayside foreshore to visit the ‘Tree of Light’ to honour the ‘every tree counts’ key theme for this year’s Day of Forests.
And so we did – and we had a great time!
It was low-key, colourful and super fun.
I let them know I was dressing up and they were welcome to join me if they wanted to. I know dressing up is not everyone’s jam – but they all arrived at my place dressed up as well! Not only was this a way to have fun, but it was also a subversive ‘up-yours’ to social expectations of what is ‘appropriate’ for a woman to wear in public and traditional views of women dressing ‘properly’ and ‘conservatively’.
My idea was to go for a night ride ‘reclaim the night/bike path’ style. I deliberately arranged our departure for 7.30 pm – when it was ‘darkly’ – and after dinner – a time most women are socially trained to stay in as it is ‘not safe’ to be out at night.
There were four of us for this ride. On the ride were myself and the formidable Nix (who you might remember from the New Materialists Garden – PhD Retreat), as well as Wendy and Alex, who are two of ‘Green Aunties’ from my community garden. Both Wendy and Alex are in their legacy years and rode pedal-assist bikes.
Nina & Leki (L), Nix, Alex and Wendy (R) 
Time for a chat 
Alex cruising in style 
Wendy and her ‘climate emergency response vehicle’ (bike) 
Nix was resplendent! 
Nina and Leki (flower bike) en route Celebrating Women’s Month and Day of the Forests at our local ‘Tree of Light’. 
Bight bike path lights 
Leki’s caboose in the gloaming 
Not so darkly female bike riders!
As if the aunties weren’t brave enough doing this ride, I also found out just before we left that Wendy and Alex had never been for a night ride before. This was a big win for women-them-us-community claiming public space – at night – in a super positive and direct way!
It was a stunning evening – clear, warm and inviting. The moon was out and our community was safe and welcoming.
We saw a few people as we started out, but the more we rode, the less people there were about until we saw no one on our return trip at all. We had the whole place to ourselves! While we rode we discussed what it felt like to be ‘out alone’ and ‘roaming the streets.
It was brilliant!
We rode 6kms along the foreshore, then stopped at the ‘The Tree of Lights’ to have a break where we joked, enjoyed, paid homage to women’s month – and trees and forests. Then I rode my guests happily home.
Our ride was a small, but wonderfully personal way to honour and celebrate sisterhood, forests, and being free to ride our bikes wherever and whenever we want to.
If you have not been out for night ride recently – I highly recommend it.
Grab a mate and your bikes and go visit a tree in your area!
Happy riding!
Key messages of the UN International Day of Forests
The UN are promoting 8 key messages for the 2021 International Day of Forests:
Healthy forests mean healthy people.
Forests provide health benefits for everyone, such as fresh air, nutritious foods, clean water, and space for recreation. In developed countries, up to 25 percent of all medicinal drugs are plant-based; in developing countries, the contribution is as high as 80 percent.
Forest food provides healthy diets.
Indigenous communities typically consume more than 100 types of wild food, many harvested in forests. A study in Africa found that the dietary diversity of children exposed to forests is at least 25 percent higher than that of children who are not. Forest destruction, on the other hand, is unhealthy – nearly one in three outbreaks of emerging infectious disease are linked to land-use change such as deforestation.
Restoring forests will improve our environment.
The world is losing 10 million hectares of forest – about the size of Iceland – each year, and land degradation affects almost 2 billion hectares, an area larger than South America. Forest loss and degradation emit large quantities of climate-warming gases, and at least 8 percent of forest plants and 5 percent of forest animals are at extremely high risk of extinction. The restoration and sustainable management of forests, on the other hand, will address the climate-change and biodiversity crises simultaneously while producing goods and services needed for sustainable development.
Sustainable forestry can create millions of green jobs.
Forests provide more than 86 million green jobs and support the livelihoods of many more people. Wood from well-managed forests supports diverse industries, from paper to the construction of tall buildings. Investment in forest restoration will help economies recover from the pandemic by creating even more employment.
It is possible to restore degraded lands at a huge scale.
The Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative, launched by the African Union in 2007, is the most ambitious climate-change adaptation and mitigation response under implementation worldwide. It seeks to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million green jobs by 2030, while greening landscapes in an 8 000 km belt across Africa’s drylands. Vast areas of degraded land elsewhere would also become highly productive again if restored with local tree species and other vegetation.
Every tree counts.
Small-scale planting and restoration projects can have big impacts. City greening creates cleaner air and more beautiful spaces and has huge benefits for the mental and physical health of urban dwellers. It is estimated that trees provide megacities with benefits worth USD 0.5 billion or more every year by reducing air pollution, cooling buildings and providing other services.
Engaging and empowering people to sustainably use forests is a key step towards positive change.
A healthy environment requires stakeholder engagement, especially at the local level so that communities can better govern and manage the land on which they depend. Community empowerment helps advance local solutions and promotes participation in ecosystem restoration. There is an opportunity to “rebuild” forest landscapes that are equitable and productive, and that avert the risks to ecosystems and people posed by forest destruction.
We can recover from our planetary, health and economic crisis. Let’s restore the planet this decade.
Investing in ecosystem restoration will help in healing individuals, communities and the environment. The aim of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which starts this year, is to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide. It offers the prospect of putting trees and forests back into degraded forest landscapes at a massive scale, thereby increasing ecological resilience and productivity. Done right, forest restoration is a key nature-based solution for building back better and achieving the future we want.
