In a recent article, the author and journalist Manu Joseph used the term “Low-stakesniceness” to describe the act of feeding animals that most Indians indulge in. We willborrow his term to extend it to another favourite activity of the environmentallyconscious Indian – tree planting. For decades, it has been drilled in to us that planting trees is the “green” thing to do, avery large band-aid to the thousands of cuts that we’ve inflicted on the environment. Toatone for the environmental sins of razing large tracts of primary forests, India hascommitted to having a third of its total land area, or 95 million hectares, under forest and tree cover by 2030. With the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021-30) andother global commitments, mass tree-planting campaigns are often seen as a solutionto mitigate the climate crisis by both government and non-government entities.