"Indigenous Tree Day" A Good Step, But We’ve Got a Long Way to Go

From the Ground at Nguni Nursery , Makhanda, Eastern Cape, South Africa

At Nguni Nursery, every day is Indigenous Tree Day. We’ve been growing and advocating for indigenous trees long before it was a hashtag or a calendar day. From Cape Town to Grahamstown, across the Albany Thicket and beyond, our nursery has always stood for the importance of planting the right trees for the right place. Trees that belong to our landscapes, our people and our history.

So yes, we’re glad to see Indigenous Tree Day gaining traction. We’re glad to see schools, municipalities and even international players getting involved in planting more of our indigenous trees. It’s something worth celebrating.

But while we celebrate, we must also be honest.

There’s a growing inequality in how this indigenous tree movement is being rolled out.

Most of the tree planting campaigns, both local and global, talk about putting indigenous people first. The UN, restoration bodies, even big donors they all say the same thing "indigenous communities must benefit." Science is also clear,  ecological restoration, climate mitigation and reforestation work best when we use indigenous plant material and indigenous communities benifit"

But in practice, that’s not what we’re seeing.

The truth is, these trees, our trees are mostly being grown and planted through large, historically advantaged nurseries. Contracts and budgets rarely make their way to grassroots operators or local landowners who are actually based in the degraded landscapes that need restoration. Even though we are growing the very same species that are needed, we are often overlooked when it comes to large scale procurement.

Worse still, some of the most vulnerable communities, who live closest to the damaged ecosystems, continue to be left out of the equation. They don’t get the trees. They don’t get the jobs. And they don’t benefit from the long term value that indigenous trees bring, both economically and ecologically.

At Nguni Nursery, we’ve been exporting indigenous trees to the UAE, we’ve been contract-growing for restoration sites in South Africa and we’ve been training unemployed youth and women in seed collection, propagation and plant care. We know the potential of this work. We’ve lived it.

But we’ve also been in meetings where we were told there’s no budget. We’ve seen excellent programmes like Working for Water collapse due to lack of funding. And we’ve seen project photos used for media, but never checked again for survival or impact.

We support Indigenous Tree Day with everything we’ve got, but support must be more than a media post or a once-off planting. It must be followed by access. By resources. By partnerships that actually include and benefit the people doing the real work, landowners, rural nurseries, small producers and indigenous communities.

If we want long-term impact, we need to build an industry that doesn’t just value indigenous trees, but also values the indigenous people growing and protecting them.

Let’s plant trees, yes. But let’s also plant justice.