We're putting too much faith in trees to save the planet

Planting trees is a quick, easy, and cheap way for businesses to hide “offset” their carbon emissions. But they might as well fling their dollar bills into a raging bushfire. 

That’s because reforestation (planting trees in deforested areas) and aforestation (planting trees in places that never had them before) are among the least effective ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere - but one of the most effective ways to greenwash. 

A recent investigation found that only 6% of the total forest credits issued by Verra, the world’s largest carbon credit certifier, achieved real emissions reductions. Only eight of the 29 assessed projects reduced emissions, and most exaggerated deforestation efforts by an average of 406%. This means that 94% of Verra's 95 million forest carbon credits are (potentially) worthless junk.

If that wasn’t reason enough to do things differently, here are…

6 reasons why mass tree-planting to offset emissions makes no sense:

1. Trees take a long time to reach carbon maturity.

It can take up to 20 years for a newly-planted tree to capture the amount of CO2 that a carbon offsetting scheme promises. That's because trees need to be growing for at least 10 years before they start to store carbon. Oh, and forests need to be about 100 years old to be master absorbers. You can't just plant a bunch of trees, dust off your hands, and walk away. The ecosystem has to be managed over multiple generations, and that commitment is starkly lacking from offsetting schemes.

2. Trees are dormant carbon bombs.

If forests are destroyed by fire, drought, logging, pests, or disease, they'll release all the carbon they've ever stored back into the atmosphere in one toxic belch. Times that by thousands of tree burps and you get a situation like the one Australia had in 2020, when smoke from the infamous bushfires – which burnt through 42 million acres – depleted the ozone layer by 3% to 5%. To put that into perspective, it takes a decade for the ozone layer to recover 1% to 3%.

3. Trees need space to grow.

Oil giant Shell wants to plant forests the size of Brazil (while continuing to pollute and plunder the Earth, but I digress). And the World Economic Forum (WEF) is driving an initiative to plant one trillion trees by 2030 (supported by big-name companies like Shell *cough*, AstraZeneca, and Nestle). But you need 900 million hectares for that many trees. That’s the size of the US!

Excuse me, but where the fuck are they going to find Brazil- and US-sized land to plant these forests that will take decades to start actually doing anything - if they don’t get taken out by a meteor first? You can't reforest areas that have already been cleared for agriculture or development purposes. And climate change has made large areas of land unsuitable habitats for trees. Often, the only "available" land is occupied by Indigenous communities, many of which have been forced off their land to make way for trees.

4. Where you plant trees matters.

You can't plant new forests willy-nilly without understanding the area's unique climate, biodiversity, geographic region, ecology, and social context. Trees planted nearer the Poles are less effective at absorbing carbon and could even have a net warming effect. Trees planted in parts of Europe and the US may have no effect on climate at all. Trees planted in the tropics grow the fastest and trap the most carbon. And planting trees in drier areas can cause water scarcity because they suck up so much of it. It's complicated.

5. How you plant trees matters.

Trees can play a significant role in carbon reduction if we plant them in the right places and in the right ways. Trees alone don't make an ecosystem. Trees, shrubs, insects, animals, water, moss, mould, bacteria, and healthy soil make an ecosystem. Too much of a single tree species can become invasive and have the opposite effect of replacing native ecosystems and reducing biodiversity. Like I said – complicated.

6. There's a lot of uncertainty with trees.

Aside from the risk of being wiped out by fire, drought, or a zombie virus, we don't know how climate change will affect trees' behaviour in the future, or how trees will affect the climate’s behaviour. Trees contribute to cloud formation and emit volatile compounds that reflect light – both these behaviours can impact temperates and rainfall in an area.

So, what should we do instead?

There are SO MANY options.

Options that, in business speak, deliver a bigger return on investment, in a much shorter timeframe. Like, no-brainer options. 

It should go without saying that the most important thing is for businesses and nations to reduce their emissions and for the world to stop burning fossil fuels. Yet we’re doing neither, so clearly we need to keep saying it.

Until that happens, here are other things businesses can do:

• Conserve and restore degraded ecosystems.

We need to protect our existing natural ecosystems to prevent biodiversity loss. Our forests are one of our best lines of defence against climate change, so for the love of god, can we stop mowing them down?! Doing this alone would cut emissions by 10%. Nature’s superpower is its ability to heal and restore itself, so long as humans stay out of it. Restoring wetlands and peatlands, for example, could be as easy as flooding them with water and letting nature do its thing.

• Invest in carbon capture technology.

Technology exists that can suck carbon from the atmosphere and store it underground or in rocks for hundreds of years. It's far more effective and faster at removing carbon than it is to plant forests and hang around for a few decades to see the impact. Yes, carbon capture tech is expensive, but I'm sure the $300 million that Shell is spending on trees can help to advance the research and bring the costs down (speaking as someone who has absolutely no idea what these things cost). Kudos to the UK government, which will invest £20 billion over 20 years to scale up the country's carbon capture sector. 

• Restore any ecosystem, anywhere we can.

Focusing on tree planting distracts from other important nature-based solutions, some of which are far more effective at absorbing carbon than forests. One study found that natural regeneration was twice as effective at removing carbon over 20 years than a small planted forest; mangrove restoration was five times as effective. We should be putting as much focus and money into restoring ALL ecosystems: our oceans, mangroves, peatlands, and wetlands. World leaders should take a leaf from the Albanian government’s book, when it declared the Vjosa River - one of the last wild rivers in Europe and home to more than 1,000 species - a national park.

• Invest in different crops.

Hemp can capture carbon twice as effectively as forests. And it's a multi-purpose crop that can be used to produce sustainable building materials, textiles, biofuel, paper, weed medicine – even wind turbines and automotive parts. Algae, bamboo, and seagrass are also serious contenders in the carbon absorption race.

We need to stop putting so much faith in trees to save the planet because it’s not going to happen. The world loses 15 billion trees every year. We’d be fools to believe that we can plant or buy our way out of this crisis.

— Tarryn ✌️

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This week's climate and sustainability news worth noting

🛢️ The Biden administration has approved a huge oil drilling project in Alaska, known as Willow, ignoring opposition on environmental and climate grounds. But don't worry, Biden is expected to restrict offshore oil leasing in the Arctic Ocean, with plans to block leases on more than 13 million of the 23 million acres that form the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Willow is in this Reserve. It will have the potential to produce more than 600 million barrels of crude over 30 years, with the potential to release 9.2 million tons of carbon. This from the man who promised "no more drilling on federal lands, period" during his campaign pledge. And now you understand greenwashing.

🧊 Antarctic sea ice has reached the lowest levels ever recorded, and climate scientists say "everyone should be concerned". It's the third time the record has been broken in six years (over four decades of monitoring). The amount of ice lost equals an area double the size of Tasmania. And it's getting closer to the "doomsday glacier", which holds enough water to raise sea levels by half a metre. Rising sea levels aside, human, animals, and ecosystems face other threats from melting permafrost: Chemical and radioactive waste dating back to the Cold War, which has the potential to harm wildlife and disrupt ecosystems, may be released during thaws. So could harmful "zombie" viruses that've been lying dormant for tens of thousands of years.

🎉 The Albanian government has declared the Vjosa River, one of the last wild rivers in Europe, a national park – making it the first of its kind on the continent. The 270km river is home to more than 1,000 species, including the critically endangered Balkan lynx, of which only 15 are estimated to remain in Albania. Next, the country hopes to regenerate villages in the Vjosa region through ecotourism. Outdoor clothing company and environmental organisation Patagonia pledged $4.6 million to support the new national park, which takes us one step closer to the goal of protecting 30% of the planet by 2030. This is offsetting at its finest.

🌀 Cyclone Freddy continues to batter southeastern Africa, having already killed more than 250 people in Madagascar, Mozambique, and Malawi, and bringing heavy rainfall to Mauritius, Reunion, and Zimbabwe. The cyclone is the longest-lasting tropical storm on record (the previous record was 31 days, set by Cyclone John in 1994 – Freddy had been raging for 36 days by Thursday this week). But what makes this "once-in-a-lifetime" storm even more unusual is that it has undergone six rounds of rapid intensification, fluctuating between severe tropical storm and Category 5 hurricane, and ricocheting between Mozambique and Madagascar. It has been raging since 6 February after it formed off the coast of Australia and travelled 4,000 miles across the Indian Ocean, blazing a path that meteorologists have not seen in two decades.

😶‍🌫️ Air pollution levels exceed safe values set by the World Health Organization (WHO) almost everywhere in the world, a new study has found. Eastern and Southern Asia were the regions with the highest air pollution levels, followed by Northern Africa. Australia and New Zealand have the lowest levels, followed by other regions in Oceania and South America. 

🇬🇧 The UK government will invest £20 billion over 20 years to scale up the country's carbon capture sector. The UK aims to capture between 20 million and 30 million tons of CO2 every year by 2030 using man-made carbon capture technologies.

🧐 Over 200 diplomats and climate scientists are meeting in Switzerland to distil nearly a decade of published science into a 20-odd-page warning about the existential danger of global warming, and what to do about it. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its synthesis report on 20 March.

And in business news:

🤨 The Climate Disclosure Project has revealed that 18,600 companies disclosed data on climate last year – a 42% year-on-year increase. Yet less than half disclosed on biodiversity, and only 1,000 disclosed information on forests. Almost six in ten companies included no information on supply chain emissions in their 2022 disclosures.

✈️ After analysing 322 large businesses' measures to reduce emissions from business flights, Transport & Environment (T&E) found that 85% lack any credible plan, and only 11 companies achieved an 'A' grade. Almost nine in ten of the companies assessed do not have commitments covering non-CO2 emissions associated with air travel.

🍺 Budweiser will transform its Samlesbury brewery, which has the capacity to brew 295 million pints per year, into a net-zero facility powered by green hydrogen.

🚘 Volkswagen will spend $193 billion on software, battery factories, and other investments. It wants every fifth vehicle sold to be electric by 2025.

Well, that's interesting

The Global Seed Vault in the Norwegian Arctic has always been closed to the public, until now. To celebrate the Vault's 15th anniversary, ordinary folk will be able to visit for the first time – virtually, that is.

Buried deep in a Spitsbergen mountain, behind five sets of metal doors, are 1.2 million seed samples from all over the world. It's a precious, priceless collection designed as an "insurance policy" against catastrophe and to prevent the permanent loss of crop species after war, natural disaster, or pandemic.

Step into the Vault, which is kept at a cool -18C, and explore thousands of seed boxes inside "one of the most important global public goods on Earth".

🌱🌱🌱

Experience immersive, engaging storytelling at its finest, here:

I'll leave you on this happy note...

It was National Elephant Day in Thailand on 13 March, a day that honours these gentle giants with feasts of fruits and vegetables. The day is dedicated to the conservation of Thailand's national animal, which is a source of national pride and part of the country's cultural and historical identity.

Look out for the happiest baby elephant you ever did see at 00:50 🐘

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