School Notes: School of the Environment
November/December 2020

Coming to a city near you: reforestation hubs

Cambium Carbon, an initiative developed by YSE students that reimagines the urban tree lifecycle, recently received financial backing from several major conservation finance sources, including a $200,000 grant from the Nature Conservancy. Founded by Ben Christensen ’20MEM and developed with classmate Marisa Repka ’20MEM, Cambium aims to build “reforestation hubs,” a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership that restores urban forests across the US. The company hopes to raise funds to plant trees in urban natural areas by valuing their benefits—like the raw wood material they provide and their ability to absorb carbon dioxide—to help turn the tide of urban forest loss. “Our model turns waste into wood into new trees,” says Christensen. “We turn a waste stream into higher-value products and then connect those revenues to new tree planting and maintenance.”

Pandemic changes rural attitudes about government

A recent YSE-led study found that the COVID-19 pandemic may have at least temporarily altered some historical anti-government attitudes that tend to be stronger in rural communities, particularly in the West. In a representative survey of residents in rural counties of the US West, a team of researchers led by YSE professor Justin Farrell identified significant bipartisan support for a range of “big” government interventions to support rural recovery. “We are only beginning to understand the social, economic, and environmental impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, but our new survey suggests that a realignment of political preferences is taking place,” said Farrell. “If these patterns hold—and we’ll know more after our second wave of the survey with the same people in spring 2021—it will have far-reaching policy impacts.”