June 2021

These days some very impressive-sounding conservation projects are catching the public eye, from massive tree-planting initiatives to high-profile urban greening. They capture the headlines and they capture the imagination. But do they deserve the level of attention and adulation that they receive? Or should we be a little more discerning as conservationists and the public, and pay a little more attention to the details?

Someone who has looked into these questions is Adam Welz. He is a writer, photographer, filmmaker and self-proclaimed conservation theorist with an uncompromising approach to conservation.

Links to resources (please report if any are found to be inactive)

• Are Huge Tree Planting Projects More Hype than Solution? - A recent article by Adam in Yale Environment 360.

• Critiquing Landscape Urbanism: A View on New York's High Line - A 2012 article in Economic and Political Weekly.

• 10 years later, New York’s High Line park brought big change — and gentrification - A 2019 article in Global News, questioning the success of the High Line.

• Saemangeum Estuarine System (Republic of Korea): Before and After Reclamation - A 2016 article in Springer's "The Wetland Book" about the effects of the Saemangeum Seawall.