Tree Planting can be the Solution to the Climate Crisis

Tree planting can be the solution to the climate crisis
The rampant global warming could be stopped by more trees. For the first time, researchers have succeeded in showing how much forest is required – and that it is possible. But skeptics call the idea “too good to be true”.

Last fall, the UN Climate Panel ruled that a billion hectares of new forest would be needed by 2050 to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees. A research group in Switzerland stuck to that figure and decided to investigate if it was actually possible and where all new trees would be placed in such cases. Their results are now published in the journal Science.

“The best way”
“We all knew that forest reforestation could play an important role in the fight against climate change, but we lacked scientific evidence of what impact it could actually have,” Thomas Crowther, one of the researchers at Zurich’s Technical University, told AFP news agency.

– Our study clearly shows that planting new trees is the best way we have access today to stop climate change.

Estimation of tree density

In their research, the Swiss have studied 80,000 high-resolution satellite images of areas with protected forests – ranging from rainforests to the Arctic tundra – to estimate what tree density is natural for the varieties of forests in the different climatic areas. They then used computer programs to determine, based on their estimates, the amount of forest that the soil is most capable of at present.

Trees in the urban environment

It turned out that the planet can handle much more than the area of ​​forests that the UN established was required in its climate panel and that 900 million hectares of land – equivalent to a whole USA – is suitable for planting new forest. Together, the new trees can soak up two-thirds of mankind’s total carbon dioxide emissions and bring down atmospheric levels to the lowest since the early 1900s.

To the researchers’ own surprise, it also turned out that the new trees can be planted in urban environments and on agricultural land. It shows what an important role so-called forestry – that is, the use of forests in traditional agriculture – can play in the fight against climate change, the researchers claim. They call their solution “undoubtedly feasible under today’s climatic conditions”.

However, the group warns that it is in a hurry, as important land quickly disappears.

Too optimistic?

However, the Swiss study has been met by skeptical voices from colleagues, who are worried that it is too optimistic to think that there will be a solution to the climate crisis that is as natural as increasing the proportion of forests.

– Planting trees to absorb two-thirds of the entire human carbon debt sounds too good to be true. Probably because that’s it, says Martin Lukac, professor of ecosystems at the University of Reading, when interviewed by AFP.

According to him, man has only succeeded in increasing the proportion of forests in a given area by either reducing the population in it or by making industrial agriculture more efficient. Or – which he points out is not sustainable in the long run – on direct orders from a dictatorship, as in China.