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More than a million trees have been planted in the city of Freetown in Sierra Leone since 2020. This reforestation scheme, known as “FreetownTheTreeTown”, has been celebrated for its innovative approach to climate action, with ambitious plans to plant another 5 million trees by 2030 and 20 million more by 2050.
A global network of mayors known as the C40 Cities and other urban development experts have called this a “highly replicable” solution for environmental crises across urban Africa.
Reforestation helps Freetown cope with excess heat, annual seasonal floods, landslides and other environmental problems. Because of its geography, squeezed between wooded mountains and coastline, and widespread poverty, the city is one of the most vulnerable in the world to the effects of the climate change.
Deforestation of Freetown’s mountains for wood, charcoal and housing space led to a landslide in 2017 that killed 1,100 people and left at least another 3,000 people homeless. FreetownTheTreetown is a response to this disaster.
Read more: Sierra Leone mudslide was a man-made tragedy that could have been prevented
There are also important historical contexts. I’ve conducted research into the colonial history of Freetown and the changing historical meaning of its trees. From the spiritual meaning of trees in Indigenous west African cultures, through to their use in colonial planning schemes, trees in Freetown have been central to political struggles over the urban landscape.
Tree planting should not be viewed simply as a generic social good. Trees are embedded in wider structures of power. From colonial-era tree planting, which aimed to reorganise Freetown into a European style city, to the 21st century’s green capitalism – in which tree “tokens” have become commodities for their marketable “carbon offset” – trees are far from apolitical.
Tree planting projects alone cannot solve environmental problems in African cities. As the world heats up, reliance on fossil fuels must be reduced. Green capitalism’s tree planting schemes won’t cut greenhouse gas emissions at source.
Climate solutions
FreetownTheTreeTown is organised through an app, TreeTracker, used by community growers who plant and care for saplings that have been grown in a nursery. They use the app to tag the geographical location of each new tree and track tree growth with photographs.
The community growers, largely women and young people, receive payments from the city administration once every quarter in the form of tokens that can be exchanged for cash. Thanks to this community, the project has achieved a high tree survival rate of over 80%.
Since 2020, this project has received almost US$3 million (£2.4 million), largely from the World Bank and the Global Environmental Facility.
But the project is supposed to start covering its own costs through selling carbon offset tokens to foreign nations and companies. Buyers will buy these to “cancel out” their own carbon emissions. A polluting airline in the US, for example, could claim it has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions if it buys carbon offset tokens from FreetownTheTreeTown.
Carbon offset schemes have been criticised by academics and journalists for overstating the rate and speed at which they can reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. They’ve been accused of distracting attention from the necessary and difficult work of transitioning away from polluting energy sources.
Charcoal is the most important product of the deforestation of Freetown’s mountainous peninsula because the city’s residents use it as cooking fuel. It is, however, highly polluting. People living in informal communities are encouraged to move to cleaner cooking fuels. Some briquettes are even made from human waste. Freetown is genuinely trying to reduce its extremely low carbon emissions.
Tensions in tree town
Tension between the conservation and exploitation of Freetown’s mountain forest has existed for centuries. Freetown was established by British colonists in 1792 as a site for the resettlement of formerly enslaved people from across west Africa. Mountain forests were cut down and turned into timber for the board houses of Freetown.
My research into the late 19th century history of Freetown has revealed that an enormous iroko tree with a trunk circumference of over 15 metres was a place of great spiritual and ritual significance in the area of Brookfields.
Read more: Bringing forests to the city: 10 ways planting trees improves health in urban centres
Many formerly enslaved people from Yorubaland, in what is today south-western Nigeria, believed iroko trees were inhabited by powerful spirits. Witches were thought to hold meetings around them.
The Brookfields iroko tree was feared. But it was also respected. Processions of the Bondo, an all-female secret society, visited the tree with offerings, such as corn and pieces of cloth.
The colonial government planted new trees to demarcate the gridded streetscape of Freetown. But Freetonians did not like the new trees. They suspected them of harbouring mosquitoes and snakes. Twenty years after the first planting, most had been cut down by the city’s residents. The colonial government attempted to overwrite west African understandings of trees by imposing a new order.
Tree planting schemes must pay close attention to histories of government-led dispossession if they are to successfully transform cities. FreetownTheTreeTown has begun to tackle this history head on by co-creating this reforested city with its communities. This is important work. But, there must be caution about simply transplanting the technical solutions from Freetown to other cities across Africa.
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Milo Gough has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council through CHASE DTP.
