A short drive outside the capital of Armenia, the Armenia Tree Project (ATP) has spent three decades doing in practice what many will be discussing within the Blue and Green Zones of COP17. We spoke to the team at this organization and asked them directly how it connects to the COP17 agenda.
TEXT : Nazareth Seferian Photo : ATP
One of the many miracles of nature is that a massive, towering tree once started as a tiny seed that you can hold in the palm of your hand. In the right conditions, the seed sprouts and grows, spreading roots and developing a shoot that then turns into a sturdy trunk with branches and leaves, becoming a permanent feature of the landscape for many decades ahead. This same process can also be used symbolically to describe what the Armenia Tree Project (ATP) has experienced. It was founded in 1994 by activist Carolyn Mugar, who was appalled by the widespread deforestation in Armenia that had resulted from the energy crisis in post-independence Armenia. Today, ATP has grown into Armenia’s largest reforestation organization, with more than 10 million trees planted, over 1,850 community green spaces established, and a footprint across all 11 regions of the country. It started, like a seed, as an idea in one person’s head and today the organization runs four full-scale nurseries producing more than a million native trees a year, a network of more than 150 household-run backyard nurseries, and two environmental education centers that have reached over 120,000 students and teachers.
One of ATP’s newest undertakings sits in Pemzashen, in the Shirak region, where cold winters and poor soils make tree survival genuinely difficult. The teams there are essentially building a forest from nothing. There is a clear connection between this work and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that COP17 is reviewing in Yerevan. As the forest matures, it will provide habitat, shelter and feeding grounds for a range of species, while helping prevent soil erosion. In addition, the developing forest is expected to provide climate-regulation, wind-protection and water-regulation functions for the farmland around it, strengthening the resilience of the wider landscape rather than just the site being planted. “In this way, creating a new forest can strengthen the resilience of the wider landscape, not only the area being planted,” says Ara Barsam, ATP Executive Director. The right species mix, the right soil preparation, the right long-term maintenance – these lay the foundation for a richer, more resilient ecosystem years and decades down the line. Creating new forest cover on degraded land, improving landscape condition, and making room for biodiversity to return are interconnected goals rather than separate boxes to check. “In terms of quantitative evaluation, we track measurable indicators such as the area where the new forest is being established, the number and diversity of trees planted, and the development of the site over time. However, we would be cautious about presenting these figures as a direct quantitative contribution to Armenia’s national biodiversity targets without a nationally agreed methodology for attributing specific outcomes to individual projects,” Barsam clarifies, “Our contribution is more appropriately understood as part of the broader national effort to create new forests on degraded land, increase forest cover and strengthen biodiversity and landscape resilience.”
One of many important conversations at COP17 is on benefit sharing from genetic resources, and this has also been an important topic for ATP over the years. Forest tree species do not produce seeds reliably every year, and after three decades of growing and planting trees, ATP kept running into years when it simply could not source enough of a given species. They tackled this problem by creating a Seed Storage and Research Center at the organization’s John and Artemis Mirak Forestry Nursery in Margahovit, which was already Armenia’s largest forestry production site, holding 2.5 to 3 million seedlings at any given time. The new facility stores seeds from forest tree and shrub species over the long term, including species listed in the Armenian Red Book, reducing ATP’s dependence on any single year’s seed harvest and allowing it to grow a wider range of species for more diverse, mixed forests.
“The facility has a direct connection to the objectives of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, particularly its focus on ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation and the sustainable management of forests. By preserving seeds of a wider range of forest tree and shrub species over the long term, we can make the production of diverse planting material more reliable, even when seed availability varies from year to year,” says Ara Barsam.
In practical terms, the benefits are shared across different levels. Armenia benefits from the conservation of native genetic resources, future restoration programs benefit from reliable access to locally appropriate seed, and communities gain from healthier and more resilient forests. “The fact that the facility is being made possible through support from a private donor also highlights a broader challenge. Infrastructure like this is essential for long-term resilience, but it can be difficult to finance through conventional institutional funding, where projects often need to demonstrate relatively immediate and measurable outputs. Seed storage may not produce a visible result immediately, but its value lies in creating the conditions that can support forest restoration for decades,” says Barsam.
In Fioletovo, in the Lori region, ATP recently helped establish a community-led governance model for the Hrant Dink Memorial Forest, putting the village itself, rather than a central agency, in charge of protecting it. The logic behind it runs through much of ATP’s forestry work. Rather than acquiring land outright, ATP typically signs agreements with communities for 15-20 years, investing in planting, maintenance and protection while a young forest is at its most vulnerable. By the end of the agreement, what remains with the community is not a plantation project but a mature forest, which is an asset that belongs to the place where it was created. Over three decades, this approach has given ATP partners across Armenia accumulated local knowledge about what restoration requires in very different landscapes.
“That changes the relationship. A community is not simply the location of a project designed elsewhere; it becomes a partner,” explains Barsam, “And we took that distributed logic one step further with our Backyard Nursery Program (BYN). Instead of producing every tree centrally, we established more than 150 small nurseries run by households. We provide training and technical knowledge while families use their own land to grow trees to ATP standards. We purchase the resulting planting material which helps to financially subsidize our BYN families.”
There are many advantages to the BYN program. It diversifies production, reduces some of the risks of relying entirely on centralized infrastructure and places tree-growing knowledge inside communities. A household that grows trees for several years acquires skills, a relatively high-value source of income and a very different relationship with restoration. Forestry stops being something that an environmental organization or the state does somewhere else.
“That is where we see a connection with the wider COP17 conversation about local-community leadership. Participation becomes more meaningful when responsibility is accompanied by knowledge, economic incentives and a tangible stake in the outcome,” Barsam explains, “ATP’s approach creates practical reasons for families to participate as it teaches understanding and creates ownership.” This is a scalable and replicable practice. The architecture behind it can be used in other settings – decentralize production, transfer knowledge, create local economic value, build long-term partnerships and leave communities with stronger natural assets. But some aspects of it need to be adapted to local conditions, like the particular incentives, species and institutional arrangements.
COP17 gives ATP the opportunity to promote these learnings and reach bigger audiences in new ways. Beyond the negotiating halls, the organization will be running youth conferences, a documentary festival, and public education programming during COP17 itself, on top of the 120,000+ students it has already reached. ATP is working with the Asian Development Bank to help advance the conversation through documentary films, biodiversity-focused youth initiatives, Green Talks, PechaKucha-style events and other public formats, creating different doors into what can otherwise be a highly technical discussion. Academia and experts provide essential knowledge, but ATP has tasked itself with helping to translate, localize and democratize that knowledge.
“A COP ultimately succeeds not only through the text negotiated by governments, but through what happens afterwards. International commitments have to become national policies, investments, institutional practices and changes in behavior,” says Barsam, “We are the grassroot engagement that helps build the constituency to make those changes possible.”
The organization is measured when it comes to discussing how COP17 will actually change in its own work. Hosting the conference gives biodiversity unusual visibility in Armenia and opens doors to scientists, governments, businesses and donors passing through Yerevan, but ATP is careful not to assume that visibility automatically becomes funding or lasting public engagement. Laid side by side, ATP’s own programs and the items on COP17’s negotiating agenda map onto each other almost point for point – ecosystem restoration in Pemzashen, seed-based genetic conservation in Margahovit, community-led governance in Fioletovo, and public engagement built to outlast the conference itself. None of this was designed as a response to COP17; ATP has been doing this work since 1994, planting its first trees years before the Convention on Biological Diversity existed in anything like its current form. But the conference gives them the opportunity to bring one clear message to everyone attending it as well as the general public outside the Blue and Green Zones. “We want people in Armenia, not only accredited delegates, to come away understanding that biodiversity is not an abstract global agenda,” Barsam says, “It is about the forest above their village, the trees that cool their street, the water and soil on which their food depends, and the decisions they make about the places they share.”