Distributed Nature, The Afforestation Easement, And A Regenerative Land Ethic

Isaac Lunt (J.D. 2024, Columbia), Note, Toward Distributed Nature: The Afforestation Easement and a Regenerative Land Ethic, 124 Colum. L. Rev. 1081 (2024):

Anthropogenic climate change is altering humanity’s relationship to the natural world. As extreme weather events become more frequent and biodiversity plummets, humankind has three responsibilities: lower carbon dioxide emissions, preserve what remains of the natural world, and generate new pockets of nature to slowly rebuild what we have destroyed.

Trees—particularly when grouped together in forests—are humanity’s allies. Yet while tree planting is an often-hailed solution to climate change, few legal tools exist in the United States to foster afforestation on private land. Current federal programs directed at tree planting focus on lumber production or agriculture, with little attention to small-scale afforestation projects aimed at restoring and recreating the natural world.

This Note joins a growing body of literature suggesting that individual property owners can make a difference in the fight against climate change by supporting natural landscapes. It terms a subset of these efforts “distributed nature” and posits that incentivizing property owners to engage in distributed nature requires legal intervention. It then suggests a legal tool, the afforestation easement, which would provide individual landowners with tax benefits for donating their land for permanent afforestation. Along the way, it reimagines the concept of “conservation” to include setting aside land not only for static preservation but also for dynamic regeneration.

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