The heat on certain July afternoons was almost physical, like walking into a wall. The streets between the tall buildings formed corridors that trapped it. The asphalt radiated it upward. The buildings reflected it sideways.

There was no escape that didn’t involve an air conditioner, and every air conditioner running made it worse for everyone outside. Living in Upper Manhattan, seeing kids running in the streets where they’d opened fire hydrants for some relief from the heat was a common sight.  Even with some 18,000 trees in Central Park and another 39,000+ trees mapped throughout Manhattan, NYC is still known as a top urban hot spot.

What I didn’t appreciate then was how much worse it’s supposed to get. By 2100, cities worldwide could be as much as 4.4 degrees Celsius hotter than they are today, according to climate modeling. While I wish this were a future in some other world of the Multiverse, unfortunately, it’s a countdown already underway, playing out in hospital admissions, energy bills, and the quiet daily suffering of people who can’t afford to escape.

Here’s the uncomfortable flip side: we already know the fix, and it grows out of the ground.

The case for the urban tree

A single healthy person is a performing asset; we simply haven’t been accounting for it that way. Research by the USDA Forest Service found that urban trees in Modesto, California, returned $1.89 in measurable benefits for every $1 invested in their management, through reduced air pollution, energy savings, and increased property values.

Peer-reviewed research published in Urban Science found that urban trees sequester between 10 and 20 kg of CO₂ per year, with larger trees capturing significantly more. Nearby commercial areas have been shown to see retail activity rise by 16–18%, and properties on tree-lined streets command 3–10% higher valuations, according to McPherson et al. in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening.

When it comes to the heat island problem, a 2023 study published in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening found that full tree canopy cover reduced human heat stress by a mean 5.5°C, rising to 8.8°C during extreme heat events when air temperatures reached 40°C. Trees don’t just cool cities. They make them survivable.

That’s the reframe I want to offer: trees are not amenities. They are load-bearing components of urban systems, as functional as a stormwater pipe or an electrical conduit. When we treat them as ornamental — nice to have, first to cut in a budget — we are making an accounting error with compounding consequences.

The infrastructure failure hiding in plain sight

So why don’t more cities have more trees? Part of the answer is policy and funding. But a large part is physical. Urban streets are biologically hostile environments for trees. Research across the US, UK, and Canada documents high mortality rates — with newly planted trees especially vulnerable during the first five years. A comprehensive literature review by Hilbert et al. found annual mortality rates reaching as high as 68.5% in some newly planted cohorts. Perhaps most striking: many street trees live only 20 years or less, a fraction of their natural lifespan, because the compacted, sealed, utility-dense ground beneath city pavements starves root systems of the soil volume, oxygen, and water they need to survive.

This is the infrastructure failure hiding in plain sight. Cities are not just losing trees; they’re running a replacement treadmill, replanting in the same inhospitable conditions, spending public funds over and over for an outcome that compounds their problems. Every tree that dies young takes its ecosystem services with it: years of CO₂ capture, commercial vitality, and heat mitigation that only a mature canopy can deliver.

The investable premise

This is where the nature-as-infrastructure framing stops being philosophical and becomes financial.

If trees are infrastructure, then the systems that enable them to survive and thrive are infrastructure technology. And right now, that category is nascent, under-capitalized, and about to be turbocharged by legally binding planting mandates.

I recently spoke with the founders of TreeTube. This Israeli company has been quietly building exactly this: a patented, below-ground system that creates the conditions trees need to survive in urban environments. Made from high-density polyethylene with 25% recycled materials, TreeTube installs beneath paved surfaces and provides root systems with adequate soil volume, aeration, and water access, giving each tree its own underground life-support module. It supports heavy traffic loads above ground while protecting surrounding utilities from root damage below.

The concept sounds simple, but the execution is not. TreeTube holds patents across the US, EU, Australia, Japan, Israel, China, and more. It has been approved by utilities companies and municipalities in Israel, the Netherlands, and Estonia, and has completed dozens of projects worldwide, including alongside Tel Aviv’s light rail corridor.

What struck me most in talking with them was how naturally the product fits the infrastructure metaphor. You’re not installing a plant. You’re installing a system — modular, customizable, engineered — that happens to grow something alive inside it.

The regulatory tailwind

Investable ideas need catalysts, and this one has two.

The European Union passed Regulation 2024/1991 on nature restoration in July 2024. Starting January 1, 2031, EU member states are legally required to achieve a measurable increase in urban tree canopy cover every six years. Beyond being a goal or guideline, this is a compliance obligation with a hard timeline.

These mandates transform a discretionary purchase into a procurement requirement. Municipalities don’t need to be persuaded that trees are good; they need systems that actually work in the ground conditions they have.

The investor mismatch — and the opportunity

Here’s the honest challenge: companies like TreeTube don’t fit neatly into most VC frameworks. The returns are long-term and linked to municipal procurement cycles rather than software-style growth curves. The buyers are cities. The product solves a public goods problem. Traditional investors often see this and move on.

But impact investors should see something different. The asset here is a mandated, recurring infrastructure need, backed by regulatory law, aligned with multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals, and supported by technology with strong IP protection and real-world proof points.

What the urban tree economy needs is patient capital that understands infrastructure timelines — the kind that built water networks and electrical grids over decades, not quarters. What it offers in return is something rare in impact investing: a product that is simultaneously climate-critical, commercially validated, and legally locked in.

I left that call thinking about my Manhattan summers differently. The trees were there, just stunted and doing their best in four inches of compacted soil. Nobody had built the ground beneath them to last. That’s still true in most cities, but it doesn’t have to be.

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She didn’t know how to answer but said something like, “Trees can become very old, and they carry a lot of wisdom.”

I suppose as a 3 or 4-year-old, I found that to be a satisfactory answer.

When I think about that question now — which seems like a pretty deep question for a 3- or 4-year-old — I still don’t know the answer. But what my mom said back then remains true. Trees have a lot of wisdom to share.

What Trees Teach Us About Climate Change

Many of us learned in grade school that you could know a tree’s age by counting its rings. In fact, these rings tell us a lot more about the environment over time than just a tree’s age. NOAA Climate.gov is home to the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB), which includes ring-width data from forests globally. The data bank has information from over 4,600 locations across six continents!

Climate scientists use these tree growth records, statistically matching the data with local weather records to estimate past temperatures or precipitation. This provides valuable climate histories that extend back hundreds or even thousands of years! More importantly, these insights help us understand natural climate variability over time and can help us create a baseline to assess human-induced climate change.

But Wait, There’s More: The Roots of Sustainable Development

Trees are nature’s record keepers. But, they are also an important resource that has driven the development of societies. Our use of this natural resource marks the birth of sustainable development as a concept.

The earliest notions of sustainability reach back over 300 years. In 1713, the German mining director Carl von Carlowitz wrote Sylvicultura Oeconomica, an essay on forestry, in which he called for sustained use of the forest to feed industry. However, Carlowitz stipulated that the use of trees should be limited to “only as many trees as would allow a continuous replenishment of an equivalent number of mature trees…allowing the forest to be maintained and managed over the long term.” In short, we can use trees, but only as quickly as we can replenish forests for sustained use.

3 Sustainability Principles We Can Learn from Trees

1. Resilience and Adaptation

Trees are masters of resilience and adaptation. They endure harsh climates, pests, and human interference, constantly evolving to survive and thrive. Some species, like the bristlecone pine, can live for thousands of years, adapting to changes in their environment over millennia and building resilience to harsh weather and bad soil.

Resilience and adaptation are also key focus areas in developing sustainability strategies on a global scale. Technology will help societies adapt to more arid climates, drought, desertification, and other impacts.

Desalination, drip irrigation and atmospheric water generation are helping to ensure water security for human consumption and agricultural and industrial needs. Agronomists are developing more robust fruit and vegetable varietals that can withstand climate changes and developing innovations to support desert farming, and the food tech industry continues to develop more efficient methods for alternative protein cultivation to ensure our future food security.

2. Resource Efficiency

Trees are remarkably efficient in their use of resources. They optimize water and nutrient absorption through complex root systems, the efficiency of which can inspire sustainable practices in human systems. For instance, adopting water conservation techniques in agriculture, including wastewater cleaning technologies to ensure we maximize use of every drop, optimizing energy use in buildings, and creating more efficient transportation systems can all contribute to a more sustainable future in which we maximize use of all our resources.

Moreover, trees rely on an almost limitless energy resource — the sun — to manage energy through photosynthesis. It’s not a new idea that we must extend our use of renewable resources as much as possible — solar, wind, hydrogen and even waves can serve as renewable energy sources. We must, however, ensure that the economic case also make sense for these energy sources if we are to phase out the use of oil and gas.

3. Models for Circular Economy

Trees embody the principles of a circular economy. They recycle nutrients through leaf litter, support diverse ecosystems, and create habitats for countless species. In a circular economy, waste is minimized, and materials are reused and recycled, much like how trees operate within their ecosystems.

So too, circular solutions can come in the form of materials we use — and ensuring everything is designed from the start for reuse. Companies are doing this by creating a new life for household waste, textile waste, and agricultural waste. The circular economy must go beyond this.

John Elkington, the grandfather of sustainable business uses a fish-and-water metaphor. We may clean up individual fish — finding ways to reuse waste, clothing and agricultural waste — yet, if the ocean is dirty, these fish will not be able to thrive. Our markets must also heed circular economic principles.

By embracing these principles, we can develop systems that reduce our environmental impact and foster sustainability.

So, Do Trees Have Souls?

While I’m still not certain trees have souls, what I do know is that trees have inspired humanity for millennia, from the Garden of Eden’s Tree of Knowledge and Tree of Life to Newton’s apple tree to the beauty of Japan’s cherry blossom trees and the wonder of the great Sequoia trees in California.

Let’s ensure we continue to learn from their wisdom and keep our planet healthy enough for them to thrive.

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