Tree consultant Christine Carmichael's book, “Racist Roots,” is about tree equity across our communities. She is in Hawaiʻi for a series of talks in Honolulu and on Maui.
"Tree equity is about making sure that there are enough trees of high enough quality and health that everyone in a city can benefit no matter where they live... Several neighborhoods, especially lower-income neighborhoods we see, have fewer trees and less healthy trees than wealthier neighborhoods," Carmichael said.
"Especially on the mainland, we've seen a lot of issues around racism against Black Americans that has existed for a long time, but especially in the last 100 years, a lot of policies that segregated neighborhoods and treated them differently based on the number of people you had that were minority living there. And those areas were disinvested and didn't have a lot of investment in infrastructure, including trees," she added.
She researched why people did not want free trees in their Detroit neighborhoods — even though they had few trees. Carmichael discovered a lot of people had bad experiences with trees not being maintained.
Join her for a talk under the trees at Foster Botanical Garden on Thursday at 10 a.m. She will be at the Maui Barnes & Noble on March 13 at 3 p.m.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 5, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
