Robledillo de la Jara, in the heart of Madrid’s mountains, is currently witnessing massive reforestation in its mountains. Every day the team of workers arrives at this location at 1,300 meters above sea level, oak in hand, ready to take the hoe and arrange the still small trees in the tree pits that will serve as their home. Before, there has been arduous work to prepare a stony terrain, on a steep slope and quite arid, until now completely covered by rockroses and brooms. Fall plantings are ideal because the cool weather and rain help the trees take root.
A few days before the arrival of the first rains of this autumn, the group of journalists visiting this area wonders in disbelief how this dry land will become a forest. “What we do is not just plant little trees, pour a little water and that’s it,” says Pedro Pérez de Ayala, co-founder of Retree, a company dedicated to “smart reforestation.” Reforesting, remember, means manage the forest and prevent fires; is to recover arid lands, water and biodiversity – the first motivation, says Pérez de Ayala, for establishing the company five years ago, is to contain emissions, and avoid desertification of a country with 20% of the land already degraded.
In the case of Retree the word smart is not there just because it looks pretty. One of the strong points of their work helping companies offset emissions by contracting their reforestation projects is the real time monitoring of the behavior of each plant and what each forest they plant is absorbing. “From a distance and without having to go to the field, we can see what is happening in each area where we work, check if the trees are growing, if they have problems and know exactly how much CO2 they are absorbing,” comments the company’s co-founder and clarifies that they only collaborate with companies that have an emissions reduction plan.
Traceability
The development of this software allows them to give confidence to their client portfolio, but also to market this AI-based tool to increase traceability and transparency in a market, the carbon market, that has sometimes been accused of lack of transparency. “We are aware that the great challenge is to restore trust in a very opaque sector and that is why we believe that monitoring is essential,” says Pérez de Ayala. Another advantage of working relying on technology is the possibility of having a forest spread across various locations throughout the country.
They have only been there for five years and already have reforested surfaces and projects underway in Madrid, Valencia, Cáceres or La Rioja; they have replanted more than 120,000 trees and are confident in stating that their forests have already absorbed more than 29 kt of CO₂ They boast of working only in arid, unpopulated areas of Spain and working with local suppliers and labor, although this sometimes increases the price at which they sell per ton of carbon. “When you explain to clients what is behind a project, they understand.”
Process
In a project like this, the first thing they do is subtract from the CO2 calculation what is emitted by the biomass that they remove before replanting. They monitor the plantations year after year and agree with the companies on contracts of up to five decades that cover the costs of maintenance and replacing dying trees. «15% more trees are planted, because it is more or less the mortality rate. Our first motivation has always been to regenerate ecosystems and create jobs in areas that are becoming depopulated. Then the issue of the CO2 market arose. Every time a decision is made, it has to be because it improves nature,” details its founder.