The market
The global value of felled trees has been estimated at $85 billion. While much of this timber is extracted illegally and escapes all statistics, the added value created by this parallel economy would increase the value to over $100 billion. If we add pulp, paper, cardboard, and related forest products, we reach a turnover exceeding $200 billion. Each year, an estimated 3 to 6 billion trees are felled in primary forests, as opposed to plantations, with a density of 50,000 to 100,000 trees per square kilometer. The main uses of this scarce resource are firewood (46%), pulpwood (still an impressive 43%), and construction timber (11%), for a total of 3.7 billion cubic meters. Originally, nearly 2,000 years ago in China, paper was a mixture of mulberry bark and hemp with bits of cotton and linen. The United States Declaration of Independence was written on hemp. It wasn't until 1843 that the shift to wood pulp spurred demand for 300 million tons of wood-based paper, of which only 38% is recycled, and non-wood fibers like bamboo, kenaf, and hemp account for just 7%. Each American citizen uses 340 kilograms (kg) of paper per year, totaling 90 million tons for the entire population. Paper consumption has increased by 400% in 40 years. While today most trees come from plantations, global paper demand requires 4 billion trees annually. A large, mature tree produces about 90,000 pages, or 2,700 copies of a 35-page newspaper. Private forests in the United States provide 91% of the timber harvested in America. These private owners plant 4 million trees every day, totaling 1.5 billion annually. This effort has led to a net 20% increase in North American forest cover over three decades, something Europeans have not managed to achieve. While such efforts are commendable in temperate zones, rainforests once covered 14% of the planet; today they cover less than 6%. Even worse, vast areas of the world that were once covered in dense forests have been transformed into deserts. Few countries protect their forests, such as Bhutan. The new constitution approved in 2008 stipulates that 60% of the country's land area must remain forested. Currently, forests represent 71%, and this percentage is increasing.
Innovation
Tree planting has seen numerous innovations. The importation of non-native species, the selection of hybrid trees, and the genetic modification of drought-resistant and fast-growing varieties have led to tree-planting programs that are transforming our appetite for wood pulp into an agricultural system where forest land is treated like farmland: soil for planting, growing, and harvesting. Modern forest farms are successfully harvesting large quantities of wood for pulping just seven years after planting. Las Gaviotas (see Case 6) pioneered forest regeneration based on the symbiotic relationship between native trees and mycorrhizal fungi, which enabled 92% of seedlings to survive under harsh summer conditions. While many of these efforts point in new directions, the greatest challenge remains planting trees where desertification has taken hold. Pieter Hoff inherited a lily and tulip export business in the Netherlands, founded by his grandfather in 1923. Pieter had always been fascinated by how trees can grow on rocks. Around the world, you can see 50-meter-long trees standing upright on rocks without any form of support, while a commercial plantation just a few kilometers away would depend on irrigation and fertilizers to survive. He realized that when we plant trees, either by digging a hole or cutting a wedge into the ground, we destroy the soil's capillary water transport system. Even worse, when we plant a tree, it has already developed secondary roots that are unable to penetrate hard, dry, rocky soil. Nature approaches this differently; without resorting to brute force, it simply deposits seeds on the ground, often carried there and covered in bird droppings. The capillary drainage of water remains intact, and the tree receives the right mix of nutrients to thrive in challenging conditions. Pieter then designed a two-hole bucket. It couldn't be simpler. One hole collects rainwater, producing and capturing water from condensation inside the box, while the other hole in the center is for sowing a seed or planting a seedling. Once a little water is trapped inside the box, it maintains a low temperature, creating a cool microclimate. A wick flows through 50 centiliters (cc) of water each day—not enough for optimal growth and not enough to kill. This challenges the plant to develop taproots and find water on its own. After testing the process for three years in the Sahara Desert, Pieter decided to sell his family business and subsequently founded AquaPro, the company that promotes the Groasis Waterboxx. His planting system is based on a box that can be used ten times, allowing for the planting of ten trees. It's called the Waterboxx. Pieter subsequently won the Popular Science magazine Innovation Award in 2010.
The first cash flow
The planting approach is simple: break up hard soil, create a small hole 10 centimeters deep, plant the seed, and place the waterboxx on top. If, a year later, the roots are deep enough, the box is simply lifted and reused elsewhere. Popular interest in his invention and the simplicity of its application enabled Pieter to create an online sales company based in the Netherlands (AquaPro), from which waterboxx containers can be ordered. This open-source approach, which requires no prior expertise or training, has proven successful in 30 projects in France, Spain, Morocco, the USA (California), Kenya, Mongolia, and Oman. The average survival rate of newly planted trees using the waterboxx is 88%, even in climatic conditions that would normally only allow for a 10% success rate. This provides strong network references with partners for large-scale operations.
The opportunity
Pieter approaches tree planting, erosion control, and desertification reversal not only as a service to society and the environment, but also as an opportunity to foster entrepreneurship by offering a transparent business model based on a proven concept. He provides aspiring entrepreneurs with a simple mathematical model and a set of basic assumptions outlining all tree-planting options for food, fodder, pulp, or biofuel. The use of transparent accounting, making these opportunities accessible to everyone with reasonable returns from previously unproductive land, creates a competitive investment proposition where the initial requirements are labor and a drive to succeed, rather than a large amount of capital. This not only generates a stable income as the barren land turns green and begins to support communities, but also builds social capital. The key to success is the entrepreneur who possesses the necessary skills and the ability to assess risks. This is one of the fundamental characteristics of the blue economy.
