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The then US president, Donald Trump, and first lady, Melania, planting a tree on the south lawn of the White House in 2020. Ive never in my life said we should plant a trillion trees. When we asked them about their decision to do this, they gave us a candid response: He takes full responsibility for the failures, and, with a team of researchers, has been re-doing the analysis with a different approach. The lead author of that study, however, cautions against pitting all tree planting efforts against forest conservation. In Cambodia, a Battered Mekong Defies Doomsday Predictions, How Weather Forecasts Can Help Dams Supply More Water, In Scramble for Clean Energy, Europe Is Turning to North Africa, As Millions of Solar Panels Age Out, Recyclers Hope to Cash In. African ecologists noticed that the Crowther map, like the WRI map, showed high-profile conservation areas such as the Serengeti plains and the Kruger National Park as suitable for afforestation, as well as millions of acres of grasslands and savannas that have been used by herders for millennia. The reports authors state, Our analysis of crediting errors demonstrates that a large fraction of the credits in the program do not reflect real climate benefits. This means that the state overestimated its offsets by a staggering 30 million tCO2e. Few people realize that such a change would transform Pakistan's climate, not only protecting the country from disasters but also saving millions of lives, she added. They still think forests play a role in solving the climate crisis their skepticism mostly centers around efforts to plant trees in places they werent before, or to plant large swaths of a single species to essentially create tree plantations instead of real forests. April8,2021, In late January, the multibillionaire Elon Musk took to Twitter and abruptly announced, Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology. That is a little over half our annual emissions, but they emphasise that many of the strategies they studied would not be cost-effective: a more plausible figure would be 11-15 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. But even as the arboreal campaigns have grown, dozens of scientists have warned that planting all those trees could potentially cause more harm than good. There was also division over how to reforest: allow humans to plant enormous numbers of saplings or leave ecosystems to regenerate on their own? The verification process isnt just for confirming a projects validity. We encourage you to research and examine these records to determine their accuracy. Free Vacation | 8 Billion Trees Free Vacation $0.00 Click Here to get a free vacation to help plant trees. South Africa has recently faced critical water shortages affecting major cities that have been exacerbated by invasive trees, and the government spends millions of dollars annually on a program called Working for Water to remove them from key watersheds and conservation areas. High-profile programs aimed at planting billions of trees are being launched worldwide. All Rights Reserved, By submitting your email, you agree to our. Silencing Science: How Indonesia Is Censoring Wildlife Research, In Europes Clean Energy Transition, Industry Looks to Heat Pumps, Amazon Under Fire: The Long Struggle Against Brazils Land Barons. Research shows that these non-native trees can consume significantly more water than native plants and can dry up rivers and wetlands. As a result, planting more trees typically makes the land darker. Its growing population needs resources that are depleting fast but given that the country is facing increasingly variable monsoons, receding Himalayan glaciers and extreme events including floods and droughts, meeting those challenges will prove extremely difficult. The reports authors stated, We found evidence that the vast majority of projects were over-credited: for these projects, common practice values are systematically low because they reflect averages based on dissimilar species types.. Best Programs and Providers 2023|November 9, 2022, Recent discoveries about erroneous carbon credit calculations have fueled public doubt about the voluntary carbon marketplace (VCM), since understanding the carbon offset marketplace can be confusing. Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features, Forests are not renewable: the felling of Swedens ancient trees, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Thomas Crowther: We messed up the communications so badly., Ive never said we should plant a trillion trees: what ecopreneur Thomas Crowther did next, homas Crowther understands more than most the danger of simple, optimistic messages about combating the climate crisis. He points to the Welsh hills, which are severely deforested and consequently lacking in wildlife but which are politically difficult to reforest because they are dominated by the sheep-farming industry. It inspired the World Economic Forums (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, launched last year after Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff read the paper on the recommendation of Al Gore, the former US vice-president. Retrieved July 17, 2021, from: https://www.terrapass.com/portfolio-audits, 8Irfan, U. Tree-planting critics have pointed out that in some countries there is an inherent conflict between using land for trees and using it for agriculture to feed growing populations. The Crowther Lab, a research group at ETH Zrich, a Swiss research university, published a similar map in a 2019 Science paper titled The global tree restoration potential, which identified 900 million hectares of land available globally for new tree cover. Ukraine updates: Russia says defense minister visits Donbas, Russian mercenary chief says Bakhmut almost fully encircled, Biden thanks Scholz for 'profound' German support on Ukraine. However, it does have some drawbacks. The initiative reached its commitment target early and now aims for 350 million hectares by 2030, and it has generated many offshoots and subsidiary programs. Abbas says that in a particular desert area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, one sapling needs a one-off provision of 15 rupees worth of water. In January, scientists affiliated with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in Britain published their 10 golden rules for restoring forests, which prioritize conservation of existing natural forests over planting. Then, the analysts find the difference between the forests current and future carbon stocks (after implementing IFM). Instead of this costly project, the government should have targeted deforestation with strict administrative measures, the senior government official said. Terrapass. For example, the aerosols create a faint haze. (2021, June 15). Volunteers plant trees on the edge of the Badain Jaran Desert on Chinas Tree-Planting Day on March 12, 2021 in Gansu Province. Similar conflicts over land use exist in all countries. Numerous organizations are facing newfound scrutiny, and the popular company Terrapass, has not been spared with many wondering, Is Terrapass legit?. In 2014, a province of Pakistan launched a Billion Tree Tsunami planting project, which was expanded into a nationwide 10-Billon Tree Tsunami project in 2018. Its a little shocking, but we dont actually have a good global perspective of where restoration is occurring, says Dr Susan Cook-Patton, a scientist at the Nature Conservancy and a member of Restors scientific advisory panel. Even as it supports forestry projects in the state of California, Terrapass exceeds quality expectations in the carbon offset marketplace, providing the highest level of transparency and efficiency possible in all its available programs. The buzz generated by big international campaigns can give prestige to projects that have been rejected on the ground. In 2020 alone, the 25.8 Mha (mega hectares) of tree cover perished.9, (A Gha is a global hectare, meaning the biologically productive hectare with the worlds average biological productivity per year.10). Tree planting is not an alternative to mitigation.. For instance, a 2018 study suggested that large-scale tree planting in dry tropical regions would cause a shift in weather patterns, leading to more rainfall on land enabling more plant growth and therefore more carbon storage. However, many developing countries lack the scientific expertise to thoroughly assess and plan tree-planting programs, and many local communities dont have enough political power to determine the fate of their land, she says, so there is a real risk that politicians will push socially and environmentally damaging projects ahead regardless of expert concerns. Uncertainties do remain, however. We are at that point of urgency with our planet.. Any organization enrolled in a carbon offset program with genuine climate-friendly goals would try to prevent this. The current focus on trees rather than grasses is partly a result of technological limitations: Its far easier and cheaper to measure above-ground carbon held in vegetation than carbon held below-ground in soil. But the subject of the forest restoration controversy is never far away. Launched in 2019, the project with support from the United Nations Environment Programme is aiming to plant 10 billion trees by 2023. One of the most widely-publicized is the Atlas of Forest and Landscape Restoration Opportunities published by the World Resources Institute (WRI), which delineates 2 billion hectares of what it terms degraded and deforested areas that it says are suitable for partial or full reforestation. For humans and wildlifes sake, verifying forestry carbon offsets is a non-negotiable step. Forests are the best nature-based solution to climate change, he says, adding that trees also provide many benefits to people, like improving health and creating [forestry-related] job opportunities.. Since the British scientist was awarded a multimillion pound long-term grant in 2018 to form the Crowther Lab, his multidisciplinary team has been trying to map the ecology of the planet. And many struggle because they dont have the right information, adds Crowther, who is to co-chair the UNs Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. "They have not appointed sufficient staff to look after these trees and who will look after them in hilly areas and desert regions anyway?". The Amazon now releases more carbon dioxide than it stores, in large part due to forest loss from mining, logging, agriculture, and fires. Trees just got a big boost at The World Economic Forum. But a growing number of scientists and environmentalists are challenging this narrative on tree-planting. Will They Affect the Climate? This, to many, smacked of colonialism: By not excluding conservation areas and traditional rangelands, they say, these maps promote the idea that Africas natural heritage can be turned into industrial tree plantations to offset the rich worlds carbon emissions. Planting billions of trees across the world is one of the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the. Harry Beugelink via Shutterstock, But even with these caveats, Archibald says that making maps of potential tree cover like the Crowther Labs and WRIs, and offering large offset payments to developing countries to plant trees, places those nations in an unfair position. The ecologist admits messing up in the past, but says his Restor project will be a Google Maps of biodiversity, showing the impact of restoration from a forest to your own back garden, Listen to our podcast: Can we really solve the climate crisis by planting trees? Specifically, California over-credited its forest carbon offsets program (the largest in the world, valued at $2 billion) by a shocking 29.4%.4. Therell be loads of plantations that corporates have set up. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been accused of encouraging the genocide of indigenous tribes at the same time that hes pledged to open up more parts of the Amazon for development. Congressional Research Service. However, a closer look at the companys standards and practices clarifies that its one of the most trustworthy climate-focused orgs in the world. Launched in 2019, the project with. They claimed in a letter that the campaign threatened to dry up streams and destroy habitats. Environmentalist Sitara Parveen from the mountainous Hunza region of northern Pakistan is happy about the move. If there should be no trees, thats what you should also be restoring. Usman Ashraf, now a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, documented how Pakistans mega tree-planting drive destroyed the traditional livelihoods of the nomadic Gujjar people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Although it would take an enormous area of new trees to measurably heat the atmosphere at a global scale, Smart says in some cases the planetary reflectance loss from new trees may outweigh carbon sequestration gains. We now know those headlines were wrong. Veldman argued that planting trees where they dont belong can harm ecosystems, make wildfires worse, and even exacerbate global warming. His critique made the case that the amount of carbon the study said 1 trillion trees could sequester was about five times too large. And their numbers keep growing: A company called tentree recently promised to plant a billion trees by 2030, beating Benioffs commitment by an order of magnitude. In May 2020, the studys authors made three corrections, including an acknowledgment that they were incorrect to state tree restoration is the most effective solution to climate change to date, and clarifying that new forests could absorb about half as much carbon from the air as the paper initially appeared to suggest. Make sure you get the right mix of species and the right social context and you can actually have a positive impact.. Last month, a global review of tree-planting initiatives in the tropics and subtropics since 1961 found that while dozens of organisations reported planting a total of 1.4 billion trees, just. Yet, as of 2020, the world lost 3.92 Gha of tree cover, representing 30% of Earths land cover. The former A3 London to Portsmouth road at Hindhead, after being restored back to heathland. Terrapass is one of many US carbon offset companies that have been under increasing scrutiny in recent months. This contrasts with the potential sale of empty credits. That worries Kashwan. The VCM is a voluntary system, meaning that there is little oversight and regulation, since there are no designated ruling bodies agreeing to one set of standards. The study, led by Jean-Franois Bastin, a postdoctoral researcher at Crowthers lab in ETH Zrich, Switzerland, was the second most featured climate paper in the media in 2019, according to one analysis. In the following years, Terrapass grew into a major resource of carbon credits, eventually helping more than 1,000 individuals and institutions mitigate their climate impact. This is not just talk. In line with this, Law has highlighted that planting rich new forests can boost local biodiversity, as well as improving water availability. Carbon leakage. There are, however, environmentalists who support the project and dismiss the criticisms leveled against it. In some areas, households burn over 10kg of wood every day. The study also looked at regions that were best able to stop that from happening, and found that indigenous territories had the best success rates. Government supporters are benefitting from the project, the official claimed. Some 40,000 hectares of forest are being destroyed every year, the senior official said. This causes a net increase in GHG emissions, but the company appears to have lowered their carbon output. China is on track to plant 35 million hectares (87 million acres) of trees in its northern arid areas by 2050 to make a so-called Great Green Wall the size of Germany. By AdamWelz These argued that the researchers had overestimated the carbon trees could store by a factor of five. However, they also have locations or partner with businesses, such as manufacturing plants, overseas. Droughts, wildfire, and insect and disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent, and forests are being replaced by grassy shrublands after these disturbances, mostly because its now too hot and dry for new generations of saplings to survive. The neural network identified more than 1.8 billion trees - surprising numbers for a region often assumed to support little vegetation, said Meyer and Tucker. Carbon offset transparency | Project standards. Forests can heal on their own if theyre allowed to, he says, and these forests end up being more resilient and more helpful in the climate fight than newly planted plots of trees. Data on the outcomes of conservation projects, available to academics, will facilitate a better understanding of what does and does not work in restoration ecology, he hopes. At ETH Zrich, researchers employ machine-learning techniques and satellite imagery to gain understanding of the Earths soils, fungi, carbon cycle and forests. Will they be limited by nutrient availability or increased fire or increased drought? Similarly, planting trees in dry areas can cause water scarcity because they suck up so much as China has discovered. Its implications were intoxicatingly hopeful. Government supporters have said that this will reach 31%, the global average. But the idea of planting individual trees isolates them from the microbes in the soil, the birds, the animals and the other plants that are necessary.. Retrieved July 16, 2021, from https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/?category=summary&dashboard, 10Global Footprint Network. 4,374 talking about this. a film arguing for extra protections for the worlds forests, The UK government has planted millions of trees over the last decade, in 2016 one Indian state planted 50 million trees in one day, Ethiopia claimed to have planted 350 million in a day, a campaign encouraging all its readers to plant a tree, remove a quarter of the carbon dioxide currently in the air, the global total of 41 billion tonnes of CO2, one of the most effective carbon drawdown solutions to date, Crowther's team published an extensive correction, the best place to plant new trees is the tropics, we have created a cooling effect that slightly offset the warming from greenhouse gas emissions, a more plausible figure would be 11-15 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, natural climate solutions could mop up about 30% of the CO2 we need to deal with every year, a 2018 report on greenhouse gas removal technologies, planting trees in dry areas can cause water scarcity because they suck up so much, enabling more plant growth and therefore more carbon storage, planting rich new forests can boost local biodiversity, Similar conflicts over land use exist in all countries. Planting trees can play a part in reducing carbon in the atmosphere but it cannot reverse global warming on its own (Credit: Getty Images). The Time magazine owner told everyone he could about the research: chief executives, friends and world leaders, even convincing climate sceptic Donald Trump to back the WEF initiative with a multibillion tree commitment. Retrieved July 17, 2021, from: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34560.pdf, 3Carbon Market Watch. Earth needs our help. George Monbiot, a columnist in the UKs Guardian newspaper, has founded a campaign called Natural Climate Solutions, which advocates restoring forests and other ecosystems. A study published this week in the journal PNAS found that the most effective way to protect the Amazon rainforest might be to leave it in the hands of its indigenous residents. The most notable concerns about carbon offset projects that companies like Terrapass support include their verifiability, how long the advantages last, leakage, and the selling of "empty" carbon credits. In contrast, planting trees in snowy regions near the poles is likely to cause a net warming, while planting them in temperate climates like that of the UK, much of Europe and parts of the US may have no net effect on climate. Microplastics Are Filling the Skies. You dont need to plant a tree to regenerate a forest, Fleischman tells The Verge. Unfortunately, it stands to reason that Californias cap-and-trade system isnt the only source of potentially overestimated forestry credits. All of this makes it easier to offset your carbon footprint, and aids in the pursuit of furthering the mission to heal the planet and save animals. In 2014 Unger calculated that, by chopping down forests from 1850 to the 2000s and thus preventing them emitting volatiles, we have created a cooling effect that slightly offset the warming from greenhouse gas emissions. A plantation site for the 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Project in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. "In my area people are being encouraged to plant trees which would help prevent natural disasters as well as providing a healthy environment," she told DW. Kathleen Smart, a post-doctoral researcher at Rhodes University in South Africa, says that replacing surfaces like grasslands or deserts which, being pale, reflect more solar radiation into outer space with relatively dark-colored tree plantations can have a heating effect on a local level, and that regional-scale land-use changes have been shown to affect climate and rainfall patterns. The team mapped how tree crown diameter, coverage, and density varied depending on . And a Pakistani government investigation found that at least $3 million in Tree Tsunami funds were stolen, mostly by government officials and landowners involved in the program. The UK government has planted millions of trees over the last decade, and has pledged another million between 2020 and 2024.