Climate change: the trouble with trees | The Economist

summer 2019 more than 38,000 fires raged across the Amazon fires that were man-made over the past 50 years almost 17% of the world's largest rainforest has been cleared and globally deforestation has almost doubled in just five years since the start of human civilization it's estimated that the number of trees around the world has fallen by almost half clearing forests increases carbon dioxide levels but planting them could store away some of the carbon already in the atmosphere everyone is looking for a silver bullet to get our way out of this really difficult problem of climate change some people have latched on to tree planting as a kind of panacea the reality is tree planting is not always good this woman runs safaris in [Music] England guests are not only here to see wild animals there to see wild trees if you could imagine when we were farming back in the 1980s through the 90s this would have been a field of one particular crop as far as the eye can see almost 20 years ago Izabella tree yes that is her real name founded 1,400 hectares of Sussex farmland back to nature by doing well nothing she thinks this is the best way to use the land to help tackle climate change Wilding is a hands-off approach it's become a sort of environment that is a nursery for open grown freely regenerating trees within 20 years we have doubled our carbon sequestered in the soil we've got the scrub we've got the grasses we've got the trees all that will be contributing to this carbon sink to stabilize the climate global carbon emissions need to drop to Net Zero by 2050 and of course not all sectors are going to get down to zero emissions by 2050 Simon Lewis is a professor of global change science we need to take some carbon out of the atmosphere and one of the cheapest easiest ways is to plant trees around half the dry weight of a tree is carbon as trees grow they take carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in their trunks leaves and roots which help slow the rate of climate change and has never been more global ambition to plant trees in 2014 51 countries pledged to plant over 3.5 million square kilometres of forest by 2030 an area slightly larger than India Gopa has made its mark in the record books by planting over 350 million trees in a single day the 2030 target looks likely to be met but there's a catch when you dig down into the numbers of these forests almost half the area pledged so far by countries is actually for monoculture plantations and that means a single species planted over thousands and thousands of hectares monoculture tree plantations like eucalyptus grow quickly but the trees are harvested every 10 or so years releasing much of the carbon stored in the tree back into the atmosphere which means that according to some studies they'll store only around one 40th of the carbon natural forests do over the long term so it's made into short-term products like paper and then when that paper is used and then discarded decomposes and that carbon goes back into the atmosphere Simon analyzed pledges from 43 countries in the tropics and subtropics these big announcements are not going to deliver on the carbon capture that we're expecting if they move natural forests would sequester 42 billion tons of carbon this century in fact those pledges to plant millions of trees actually promise to store 26 billion tons less carbon than they could [Music] sometimes the motives for planting forests are less green than they might appear by 2020 Island ought to have cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below 2005 levels but at current rates it will have reduced them by only 5% planting forests might help island avoid massive penalties for missing EU targets because the potential carbon these forests could store in the future can be counted as a carbon credit today in the 1920s Ireland had the lowest forest cover in Europe at around 1% that's now risen to 11% and the government has set a target to cover 18% of the land with forest by 2046 an island they're rapidly increasing the amount of forest cover but it's overwhelmingly going towards monoculture plantations of conifers and now local community groups are protesting against these monoculture tree plantations they say they're doing more harm than good because these monoculture plantations are about getting the maximum yield as fast as possible they often apply fertilisers which contribute to greenhouse gas nitrous oxide conifer plantations are very densely stocked so come out almost all the light are very poor for biodiversity and can really affect people living nearby tree planting programs invariably have an impact on the people living nearby in East Africa one project is demonstrating what can be achieved when there's genuine buy-in from the local communities Green Ethiopia is a mixed tree planting charity we plant seedlings in rural areas of India that is heavily affected by degradation due to deforestation the land is communally owned and cooperatives of local women receive benefits for planting trees which are protected from being harvested empowering the local community tree planting contribute a lot for the sustainability of forestation activities because it creates the sense of ownership the local communities strongly participate on planting managing and conserving their sites here conserving is just as important as planting green Ethiopia assesses whether the condition of the land is good enough to regenerate by itself when it is on about a third of the area the charity runs they leave it alone just like Isabella tree back in England perhaps the right way to think about tree planting is just leave the land and it can do it spontaneously itself there's no need for interventions by humans in most cases but this approach brings its own challenges the problem with this kind of natural regeneration is it's very difficult to get funding the funding is all driven by targets the numbers gain in a regenerated landscape like this we can't have any idea of how many Oaks they'll be or how many crabapples will come monoculture plantations are often preferred because they make money so some experts are looking to a future where carbon payments could create financial incentives for natural forests if carbon becomes much more important as a commodity then perhaps though these natural forests will become more profitable than as a real opportunity here to shift the incentives towards getting benefits for the climate and benefits for local people and benefits for local wildlife ultimately though the trouble with trees tackling climate change is space there's just not enough land in the world to plant enough trees to offset all the carbon emissions from fossil fuels we could say let's restore forests on every single piece of land that used to have forests on from before agriculture and if we did that it would be about 200 billion tons of carbon now that sounds a lot but to put it in context that's about 20 years worth of emissions at present breaks tree planting might be looked at as a savior but it's not it's not an excuse not to cut fossil fuel emissions I'm Sarah the director of this film if you want to learn more about this topic you can watch the story behind trees and climate change at the link opposite at the other link you can find some articles we use for research and some other exclusive materials thanks for watching you

Channel: The Economist

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Keywords: The Economist, Economist, Economist Films, Economist Videos, News, short-documentary, climate change, global warming, global warming short film, climate, environment, greenhouse gases, climate change news, climate crisis, climate change solutions, planting trees, trees

Id: EXkbdELr4EQ

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 18 2019