Let us not forget that this is primarily due to deforestation, whether directly (due to loss of tree cover for moisture retention) or indirectly (due to climate change).
Anyway all policy scenarios with any hope of staying below 2ºC, let alone 1.5ºC, include a lot of net reforestation. So we’ll have to turn this around, somewhere.
It seems like people are working on it in various places, especially in the Amazon:
Did you ever find an answer to this re: reforestation projects? Could be useful to relocate termites in order to introduce the microbes to grasslands.
You should have plenty of space if you can plant in the park! Public fruit trees are a great community service, and if you tell the park people that you want to plant native trees, they'd be foolish to say no. More fruit for you, more fruit for the birds, more fruit for anyone smart enough to harvest it, less grass and prickly stuff, more shade in the heat of summer. Everyone wins. Including the people at the persimmon nursery. :)
Projects like this are in desperate need of serious people to help them scale up. If even a small fraction of the people who see articles like this (or videos, or whatever) were to contribute some of their time and energy to the projects themselves, then the odds wouldn't be so against them, and that little bit of progress would become reforestation of entire regions. The question isn't whether it's possible for a project like this to succeed; the question is whether there are enough people willing to make it happen.
https://worldfloraonline.org/ is useful for verifying plant names and finding botanical descriptions.
There's never enough space! Have you looked into nearby lands where you could guerrilla plant some things? At least you got some pawpaws planted already. That's probably the most important thing.
All systems of oppression must be dismantled, no matter how inconvenient or unpleasant that process may be.
This article was (from what I understood) mostly referring to old heirloom crops that are no longer widely grown because they've been superseded by newer commercial cultivars. I remember hearing that in the early 1900s, there were something like 53 potato cultivars available to buy in grocery stores in the USA, but by the end of the century, there were only 4. That probably applies to other crops as well. Another example of capitalism reducing biodiversity, I guess.
Reforesting with plenty of fruiting plants, both natives and non-natives that aren't too invasive, probably achieves the most reasonable balance. The land gets reforested, and you also get food, meaning that you don't need to buy produce that was grown by deforesting somewhere else.
Does your eco-community have any online presence?