ICELAND

THE TREE LAND INITIATIVE

• "Tree Land" is an initiative revolved around preventing and counteracting deforestation within Iceland through advertising and people power. By doing this we hope that we reduce the prominence of deforestation as an environmental problem within Iceland and improve the quality of air that we breath. But that of course relies on you, the public, taking action and using the power of population to improve the environment!

ICELAND'S DEFORESTATION HISTORY

• During the settling of the Vikings around 870 CE at least one quarter of Iceland was covered in large birch forests and woodlands, nowadays a mere 1% of it is vegetation. This is mainly due to the use of wood for building, fire places and cooking. Even though wood isn't used commonly used for any of these tasks pastoralism, better known as the farming and containing of live stock, has made it so that trees aren't able to grow in many deforested areas. After all, how would the trees grow if they are constantly being stepped on by pigs and cows!? As a country we have to protect our forests, why you may ask? Because they breathe life into the country!

OBJECTIVE AND METHODS

• In order to reduce deforestation and improve the quality of air we plan to begin promoting the use of computers over paper, recycling more materials and planting a birch tree on your property via the use of internet advertising, television ads and informational incursions at schools. By advertising and presenting the severity of the deforestation to the public we hope we can touch a nerve and make them take action. But of course, we will need the assistance of more than just the public. In order to send a clear message that we won't stand for deforestation, we hope to successfully persuade popular stores such 'Bónus' and '10-11' to support a bill that will restrict pastoralism on deforested areas and the uses of similar places of deforestation. This bill in itself would make our plan extremely sustainable and in future we plan to our evolve our initiative into an annual tree planting day.

THANKS FOR READING!