Why It Is Not Enough to Simply Plant Millions of Trees I Earth Explained!

european commissioners love underlying presenting her a promise green to save the world's largest rainfall the objective must be reforesting whether for good reasons or bad reforestation has been a major buzzword recently planting trees eating trees planting trees planting 20 million trees and with new projects being announced all the time like the eu's goal to plant an additional 3 billion trees by 2030 it looks like it's here to stay but is that a really good thing in many ways that can be seen as a good thing because forests help to mitigate the effects of climate change trees clean the air by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen an adult tree can absorb around 22 kilograms of carbon each year in fact forests worldwide soak up around twice as much carbon as they produce giving them the name carbon sink currently trees absorb roughly 30 percent of all global co2 emissions and scientists estimate that natural forest regrowth could store a further 23 this could reduce temperatures in cities by up to 8 degrees celsius and go a long way toward preventing a worse climate catastrophe and so planting more of them seems like a no-brainer global projects like the wwf's one trillion trees campaign the bond challenge which wants to restore 350 million hectares of forest by 2030 and even the crowdfunded team trees initiative which was founded by mr beast and mark rober have all set ambitious tree planting goals but despite their efforts forest cover across the world is still rapidly decreasing every minute an area of forest to the size of 40 football fields is destroyed and in 2020 loss of valuable tropical rainforest actually increased to around 12 million hectares when trees are cut down we don't just lose storage for carbon but even more of it is added to the atmosphere global deforestation is responsible for between 10 and 20 percent of total worldwide emissions in fact thanks to uncontrolled fires droughts and clearing for plantations parts of the amazon the world's largest rainforest have recently become a negative carbon sink that means they emit more carbon than they store while reforestation aims to offset these problems recent research has come to a worrying conclusion according to stanford university nearly 80 percent of pledges to the bond challenge actually involve creating monoculture plantations or planting economically viable trees like eucalyptus or rubber plantations typically sequester far less carbon than natural forests and if the trees have been planted for reasons of profit they're often cut down again after 10 to 20 years as we saw earlier this reduces their effectiveness and releases more carbon into the atmosphere monoculture plantations are a particular problem in countries like brazil and indonesia which feed the global paper and palm oil industries in brazil around 19 million hectares have been reforested with non-native eucalyptus trees which will later be pulped for paper these plantations require huge amounts of water and pesticides and are known locally as green deserts because they destroy biodiversity introducing non-native trees can also exasperate problems like soil erosion or water shortages as seen in china's yangzi river basin and the usa's pines and lions program the reforestation policy adopted for much of the 20th century created an enormous fire hazard by covering large areas of land and pine trees destined for the timber industry with no other flora around them forest fires burned out of control destroying acres of trees and even threatening local towns in other words many reforestation projects aren't just falling short of their goals but causing even more damage to the environment suddenly the idea of planting trees to save the planet doesn't seem so simple after all so how can we really solve this problem scientists have learned that reforestation needs to be carried out with a variety of native trees that nourish the ecosystem around them and the local communities one project that was created with exactly this in mind is the un's red plus program which aims to reduce emissions from deforestation at the same time as increasing sustainable development in communities the first scheme to issue third party verified internationally recognized red plus credits was the wildlife works casigao wildlife corridor project in kenya located between tavo east and savo west national parks in the southeast of the country the casigao wildlife corridor provides an important migratory route for wildlife but while we may be familiar with the idea of wildlife rangers protecting endangered species casagao has gone one step further here hundreds of unarmed rangers patrol around 500 000 acres of dry land forest watching over not just animals but trees in areas like this trees have traditionally been cut down for a variety of reasons the two most common are slash and burn deforestation to clear more land for farming and chopping down trees illegally to produce charcoal in fact charcoal production is responsible for around five percent of all forest loss worldwide while felling trees for subsistence farming is behind around 48 percent of global deforestation essentially trees are often cut down for economic reasons and so the wildlife works red plus projects decided to tackle the root of the problem in kazigao by creating local jobs that provide alternative sources of income [Music] not just the wilderness rangers who protect the local wildlife and trees but also an eco charcoal project which creates sustainable fuel instead of cutting down whole trees to burn only the smallest branches are stripped allowing for rapid and healthy regrowth kazigao also contributes to reforestation with its very own seedling program the tree varieties cultivated here are all native to the area so they'll benefit the land and promote biodiversity over the past four years more than 55 000 saplings have been planted by protecting the existing trees and planting more cassie gow now stores around 104 million tons of co2 in its forest and soil with more trees being added all the time the income generated by the community can be channeled into other project activities providing education drinking water and medical care over 100 000 local people now have access to community development programs designed by local leaders all from the simple aim of preventing deforestation it's true that planting trees if done correctly can have great benefits for the planet if we want to mitigate the effects of climate change we will need as much tree cover as possible but we need to help trees to help us and reforestation can never be as good as avoiding deforestation in the first place instead removing the economic need to cut down trees and protecting them as though they were endangered wildlife species can go a long way to creating a green and healthy planet hi i'm nina sustainability manager at termata when we first heard about the classical wildlife corridor project we were really excited to protect the forest like an endangered species really convinced us with the help of our friend's garment partner we now compensate all of theramata's unavoidable co2 emissions through this project if you also want to support this red plus project just check out the link in the description below

Channel: Terra Mater

Views: 141,221

Keywords: nature, wildlife, climate, climate change, deforestation, reforestation, afforestation, trees, logging, wildfire, planting trees, bonn challenge, trillion trees, trillion trees campaign, teamtrees, mrbeast team trees, monoculture

Id: 24NpPjo8T4I

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021