Question: On average how many trees are grown a year?

Jennifer Bates answered on 8 Nov 2016:

Hi!
This is a really cool but tough question!

One estimate by satellite puts around 400 billion trees currently in existence in the world, but another study done on the ground suggests there are 390 billion in the Amazon alone!

The UN has what it is calling the Billion Tree Campaign (http://www.un.org/climatechange/blog/2014/08/plant-planet-billion-tree-campaign/) where they are aiming to encourage countries and industry to reach a target of 1 billion new trees being planted each year to replace the HUGE deforestation that is occurring. They are having each planted tree registered so they can track this (over 12 billion in the last 5 years), but whether these all survive is difficult to track.

A lot of countries, states and cities have their own projects, like the 1 million tree initiatives in London in 2011 and the annual National Tree Day in Australia.

The scary bit is that over 15 billion trees are cut down every year by human action.

So planting 1 billion extra a year is not exactly a lot…