Afforestation is creating forests where there are non (and haven’t been for a minimum of 5o years, otherwise it’s reforestation). It means the conversion of abandoned and degraded agricultural lands into forests and hence lands that hold more water and carbon and life diversity.
The official definition of forest according to the UN, namely the FAO, is “land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than five meters and a canopy cover of more than 10%, or trees able to reach these thresholds in situ. It does not include land predominantly under agricultural or urban land use.” Note that this means an olive/orange/eucalyptus/pine/… monoculture for production is not a forest. In some quotation the second sentence is missing and people might think those monotonous single-species landscapes count as forests.
We also like to add that when we say forest we eventually mean the forest-forest kind. The many, many, many different plants and animals and mycilium and shade and water and life and all the good things kind of forest you and I may dream up in our heads and how we know them from own experience.
Read more about afforestation for example on Science Direct here.
At AlmaOhana we are putting a lot of focus and energy into expanding the existing forests and growing new ones. We use at least three differnt approaches for this: our AlmaOhana Microgardens, one tree at a time, permaculture style swales with trees on the birms and the “tree lines” in the lower areas as per Syntropic agroforestry. Read more on the relevant page!