Note completion: Community climate project

SPEAKER: Thank you. Our project began three years ago with a simple observation: the city's public tree canopy was shrinking, and no one in particular was responsible for reversing that. We started by mapping the losses, district by district, using satellite imagery from 2010 onward. The map itself surprised people; the decline was not evenly distributed, and the districts with the steepest losses were also those with the lowest average household incomes. In year two we shifted from mapping to planting. Working with fourteen local schools, we planted just over two thousand saplings. The survival rate after eighteen months was seventy-one per cent, which is higher than the national average for similar programmes, and we credit two things: careful species selection and, more importantly, a volunteer watering network that holds up through the summer. In year three our focus is shifting again, this time toward policy — specifically, a proposal that would require any new development above a certain size to contribute to a dedicated canopy fund.