[fgeiger]

Who's water? Planting trees usually helps to prevent droughts because they keep water in the local climate with effects like shading the ground and containing rainwater (instead of the rain just washing down the next river). I'm that sense watering them is a good investment.

[elif]

If you look at actual reforestation projects in the actual world, putting a seedling in the soil with a mesh fence is about 5% of the effort.

Irrigation is about 95%.