DEAR EDITOR, I write to offer my congratulations and thanks to the Pan Oceanic Bank (POB) for the bank’s Corporate and Social Responsibility Project involving school children from many school around Honiara in planting trees to improve the environment and help in the fight against climate change.

Whether one of the school children featured in your newspaper today, Tuesday, April 4, 2017, or an individual or a business, all can contribute to reforestation and the benefits of doing so are far more manifest than perhaps well known.

We should all be mindful that not only do trees absorb greenhouse gas emissions, but they also improve air quality, recycle water, create shade, and provide food and homes for living things across the planet. The simple act of planting trees helps sustain communities and the environment in countless ways.

In addition to their important economic, cultural and recreational value, the ecological value of re-forestation is vital.

Forests provide critical ecosystem services, including –

Capturing solar energy and create oxygen

Moderating local and regional climates

Storing water and affect water table

Developing and condition soils

Storing and recycling nutrients

Providing essentials of life to birds, fish and other wildlife

Adding to the planet’s biodiversity

Tempering the effects of global warming

Acting as carbon reservoirs

Similarly, urban canopies provide a broad array of well-known environmental, economic, and social benefits, including2:

Sequestering of gaseous air pollutants and particulates.

Energy conservation through cooling, shade, and wind reduction

Storm-water attenuation

Noise buffering

Provision of wildlife habitat, and

Increased property values

So, I end by thanking Pan Oceanic Bank for the initiative taken in encouraging re-forestation and to all those who care sufficiently and are doing something for the environment whether in Honiara or in other parts of the Solomon Islands.

Yours sincerely

FRANK SHORT