Saturday, March 14, 2020

Climate change: Will planting millions of trees really save the planet?

By David Shukman Science editor 14 March 2020
Related Topics
Climate change

Image copyright JEFF OVERS


From Greta Thunberg to Donald Trump and airlines to oil companies, everyone is suddenly going crazy for trees.

The UK government has pledged to plant millions a year while other countries have schemes running into billions.

But are these grand ambitions achievable? How much carbon dioxide do trees really pull in from the atmosphere? And what happens to a forest, planted amid a fanfare, over the following decades?


How many will the UK plant?

Last year's UK general election became a contest to look green.

The Conservatives' pledge of planting 30 million trees a year, confirmed in the Budget this week, is a big step up on current rates. Critics wonder whether it's possible given that earlier targets were far easier and weren't met.

If the new planting rate is achieved, it would lead to something like 17% of the UK becoming forested, as opposed to 13% now.

Tree planting is a popular idea because forests are not only beautiful but also useful: they support wildlife, help with holding back floodwater and provide timber.

At top speed, Canadian Shelby Barber can plant more than 4,000 trees a day

And trees absorb carbon dioxide - the main gas heating the planet - so planting more of them is seen by many as a climate change solution.

At the moment, the UK's forests pull in about 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year but the hope is to more than double that. 

Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

It would involve potentially sensitive decisions about where to turn fields into forests: for example, should trees be planted where crops are grown or where cattle or sheep are grazed?

And because it can take decades to get a financial return from trees, many farmers and landowners are waiting for the government to announce new incentives.

Can you plant that many?

Yes, with the right people.

I watched a team of people in their 20s working on a project for the Forestry Commission, in Norfolk, and their speed was phenomenal. When they got going, I timed each of them planting a tree roughly every four seconds.


During the course of a day, they could plant between 2,000 and 4,000 trees, piercing the soil with a shovel, stooping down to bury the roots of a tiny Douglas Fir, pressing the sapling in with a boot, and then pacing out the gap to the next one.






There are machines that can do the job - and even drones - but people power is the tried and tested method. And good money can be earned - about 7p for every tree.


For years, it's been popular among students in Canada as a summer job. But inspiring the same enthusiasm among British people is a different story.


Liz Boivin, whose company Tomorrow's Forests employs the team I visited, finds it is Canadians, Australians and eastern Europeans who most regularly sign up for a season's work.


She doubts whether there are enough trained staff in Britain to support the government's plans for a huge increase in planting.


"You need to have the workforce to hit those numbers, which at the moment you don't have," she says.
What problems could there be?


Trees grow very slowly so it's not enough just to plant them and then walk away.


In their early years, saplings are extremely vulnerable to a long list of threats: droughts, storms, pests and diseases. So it's possible that around a quarter of a newly-planted forest will die young.


Only when the survivors make it to an age of 20-30 years do they draw in significant amounts of carbon dioxide. By this stage, the forest will only thrive if some trees are removed or "thinned" to allow more room for others to develop.


If the timber from the cleared trees is then used in buildings, the carbon will remain locked up for as long as the structure stands. But if the trees are left unattended and end up dying and rotting, all the carbon that had been stored will then be released.


Many of Britain's tree planters come from countries like Canada and Australia

So the key is a plan for careful management, according to Stuart Goodall, who runs Confor, a forest industries association. He's worried that the mania for trees may turn out to be a passing fashion, with investors excited by the planting but not by the long years that follow.

"We don't want to be rushed by others who have taken a sudden interest and may run away in 5-10 years' time," he says.

For a big increase in tree planting, Mr Goodall says there will need to be far greater supply of saplings but British nurseries are wary of scaling up until they're sure the government is serious.

Can trees stop climate change?

The answer is more complicated than you might think.

Trees use carbon dioxide as part of the process of photosynthesis - with the carbon ending up in the branches, trunk and roots. But at the same time they rely on respiration, which releases some carbon dioxide.

That's why, over the years, people have described trees as "breathing" - inhaling and exhaling a flow of gases. And it turns out that understanding exactly how that flow works is extremely hard.

Prof Rob MacKenzie, of the University of Birmingham, is honest about the lack of knowledge. "There are lots of things we don't know about the precise movement of carbon."






We're in a hi-tech outdoor laboratory that he runs in a forest in Staffordshire.


Instruments are mounted on tree trunks and on the ground to measure every aspect of how the trees are functioning. Research so far has shown that every square metre draws in about 1,700g of CO2 every year - while also releasing up to 1,200g.

And as a forest gets older, those flows are likely to become more balanced. Prof MacKenzie says it would be a "disaster" if governments and companies rely on forests to "clear up the mess" of carbon pollution.

And he paints a grim picture of what could go wrong. "We plant lot of trees, we think we've done the job, we forget about them, and what we're left with is a really desolate dying diseased landscape that no one cares about."
So what are the solutions?

Partly, they involve choosing the right trees and partly it's about making sure that local people benefit.

In the sprawling forest of Thetford, in Norfolk, much of it planted in a rush after the First World War, Eleanor Tew has researched the best options.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a government-encouraged rash of planting ended up with regimented rows of the same species of conifers - which meant they were susceptible to the same pests and diseases.

Image copyright  JEFF OVERS
Planting trees without a plan can end up doing "more harm than good"

For Eleanor, it's important to make sure that future forests are more resilient.

"It's a bit like making sure you don't put all your eggs in one basket," she says. "It may seem that the obvious thing is to plant one species that's really good for timber or another species that's good for carbon but if they don't cope with a disease, then the whole forest fails."

And for Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, it's vital that forestry schemes, particularly in developing countries, aren't imposed on the people there, but instead involve them.

She points to a project in the Humbo region of Ethiopia where farmers were encouraged to regenerate woodland by being given legal rights over the trees and also by getting training in forest management.

By contrast, a forestry scheme in northwest China successfully protected people living there from dust storms - a positive development - but the growth of the trees then led to water shortages in villages downstream.

She says: "There is an idea that you can just buy land and plant trees but that's too simplistic - there is a risk of doing more harm than good."

Follow David on Twitter.


CLIMATE CHANGE: A really simple guide
A TO Z: Climate-related words and phrases explained
YOUR HOME: How much warmer is your city?
FOOD: What is your diet's carbon footprint?
IN CHARTS: How warm has the world got?

Ethiopia's Ambo city: 'From freedom to repression under Abiy Ahmed'

People gather for the rally of Ethiopia's new Prime Minister in Ambo, about 120km west of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on April 11, 2018Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionAbiy Ahmed drew a huge crowd when he visited Ambo city in his first week in office
Under Ethiopian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed, the city of Ambo has turned from being a symbol of freedom into a symbol of repression, as the security forces try to curb the growth of ethnically inspired rebel and opposition groups that threaten his "coming together" vision.
Ambo, which has a large student population because of its university, was at the centre of mass protests that saw Mr Abiy rise to power in April 2018 with a promise to end decades of authoritarian rule in a nation with more than 100 million people belonging to at least 80 ethnic groups.
Getty Images
Ambo is where we are going to build the statue of our liberty, our New York"
Abiy Ahmed
Ethiopia's prime minister
Presentational white space
Most of Ambo's residents are Oromos - and the protests were largely driven by anger that despite being Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, they were marginalised from political and economic power, with no Oromo ever serving as prime minister.
Acknowledging Ambo's role in bringing about change during a visit to the city within days of becoming the first Oromo to hold the prime minister's post, Mr Abiy said: "Ambo is where we are going to build the statue of our liberty, our New York."
At a fund-raising event in February 2019, the prime minister sold his watch for 5m birr (about $155,000, £120,000) to kick-start development in the city.
It was a further indication of the huge political significance he attached to Ambo, traditionally regarded as a stronghold of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a former rebel group which laid down arms following peace talks with Mr Abiy.
People fill the road after the rally of Ethiopia's new Prime Minister in Ambo, about 120km west of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on April 11, 2018Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionStudents were at the forefront of demands for change
But a year later, there are few signs of development in Ambo, which is about 100km (60 miles) west of the capital Addis Ababa. Instead, residents are once again complaining of a return of police brutality, with young men being randomly beaten up or detained as they go about their daily lives.

'I was lucky'

I witnessed some of this during a visit to Ambo.
In one instance about six policemen forced two young men to kneel in front of pedestrians, before kicking them and hitting them with sticks.
In another instance, two young men were forcibly taken to a police station. Their elbows were tied behind their backs. One of them pleaded, in vain, with the officers to untie him.
No-one dared to intervene for fear that the police would assault them too.
Bekele
BBC
I saw policemen walk around with scissors, giving haircuts to young men perceived to have long hair or afros"
Bekele Atoma
BBC journalist
Presentational white space
The policemen were from the regional force - and their numbers were swelled last Sunday when hundreds more graduated, raising fears that the crackdown will intensify ahead of the general election slated for August. That is the first time that Mr Abiy will face the voters since the ruling coalition chose him as prime minister to order to quell the nationwide protests.
I also saw policemen walking around Ambo with scissors, giving haircuts on the spot to young men whom they perceive to have long hair or afros.
They considered my hair to be an afro but I was lucky - they let me off with a warning to chop it off myself, which I did not do as I was going to leave Ambo in two days' time.

'I was unable to access the internet'

Police just assume that men with such looks are troublemakers and supporters of rebel leader Kumsa Diriba, who they see as a major threat to western Oromia's stability and Mr Abiy's vision of forcing a new sense of national unity, known as "coming together" .
Kumsaa DiribaImage copyrightSOCIAL MEDIA
Image captionRebel commander Kumsa Diriba refuses to make peace with the government
Having spurned Mr Abiy's peace overtures in 2018, Mr Kumsa, who is also known as Jaal Maro, is continuing to push for the "liberation" of Oromia from his forest hideout in the remote west.
He split from the OLF, the biggest Oromo rebel group, after it decided to turn into a political party, taking with him an unspecified number of fighters under his command.
The government suspects that Mr Kumsa's rebels have infiltrated Ambo, and were responsible for the bomb blast at a pro-Abiy rally held last month to show that the prime minister still commands significant support in the city.
The rebels, via their supporters and anonymous accounts, have also been slowly gaining a profile on social media in an attempt to raise discontent against the government, especially through the circulation of the names of victims of alleged brutality by the security forces.
The government's attempt to keep a lid on dissent has led to frequent internet shutdowns in much of western Oromia since January, and in some areas people cannot even make or receive phone calls. This is despite the fact that Mr Abiy has promised to liberalise the telecom sector and end the monopoly of state-owned Ethio Telecom.
Presentational grey line

Read more about Ethiopia:

Presentational grey line
In an interview with BBC Afaan Oromoo, the deputy chief of staff of Ethiopia's Defence Force, Gen Berhanu Jula, hinted that the shutdowns were linked to military operations to dismantle camps under Mr Kumsa's control, while a senior official of Mr Abiy's newly formed Prosperity Party (PP), Taye Dendea, denied that innocent people were victims of the security force operation.
"The government has no reason to target civilians, we care about our people more than anyone else," Mr Taye told BBC Afaan Oromoo.
Presentational white space
In Ambo, I was unable to access the internet over my mobile phone throughout my three-week stay. On the two occasions I went to an internet cafe, it had poor broadband connection and I had to wait for a long time before I could check my emails and social media accounts.
Residents suspect that apart from government concerns about the rebels, the shutdowns are intended to limit political campaigning and starve young people of news ahead of the general election.
Residents point out that Jawar Mohammed - who is probably the most prominent and controversial Ethiopian social media activist - is now also making life difficult for the prime minister.
Jawar Mohammed (C), a member of the Oromo ethnic group who has been a public critic of Abiy, addresses supporters that had gathered outside his home in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa after he accused security forces of trying to orchestrate an attack against him October 24, 2019Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionSocial media activist Jawar Mohammed has joined an opposition party
When exiled in the US, Mr Jawar used Facebook effectively to get Oromos on to the streets to rise against the former government.
Having returned to Ethiopia after Mr Abiy took power, he briefly became a supporter of the prime minister but is now a fierce opponent.

Nobel laureate booed

Mr Jawar put out a video on Facebook soon after Mr Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, accusing the government of trying to remove his guards from his home in Addis Ababa as part of a ploy to orchestrate an attack on him.
Despite government denials of any such plan, Mr Jawar's supporters staged protests against Mr Abiy in parts of Oromia - in one instance, burning copies of the prime minister's newly published book, which outlines his "coming together" vision.
When Mr Abiy subsequently visited Ambo for a meeting with selected guests in a hotel, pro-Jawar youths staged a protest and booed the prime minister, who had been awarded the Nobel prize for his "decisive initiative" to end the border conflict with Eritrea, and for the "important reforms" he had initiated in Ethiopia with a pledge to "strengthen democracy".

Getty Images
Key facts: Abiy Ahmed
Bornto a Muslim father and a Christian mother on 15 August 1976
Joined the armed struggle against the Marxist Derg regime in 1990
Served as a UN peacekeeper in Rwanda in 1995
Entered politics in 2010
Became prime minister in 2018
Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 
Source: BBC

Jawar has joined the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), which has formed an alliance with the OLF and the Oromo National Party (ONP) to contest the election on what is expected to be a strong ethno-nationalist ticket.
In Oromia, it is likely to pose the biggest electoral challenge to Mr Abiy's PP, which was launched in December after a merger of eight of the nine regional parties which make up Ethiopia's ruling coalition.
Mr Abiy hopes that the PP will foster national unity and keep ethnic nationalism in check.
Chart showing the ethnic make-up of Ethiopia
But he has taken a huge risk as the mass protests that propelled him to power were not just about political freedom - but also about the right of each group to express their ethnic identities more freely and to have greater autonomy for their regions.
So, as far as ethno-nationalists in Ambo and elsewhere in Oromia are concerned, Mr Abiy has sold out.
Worrying for the Nobel laureate, Defence Minister Lemma Megersa, a fellow Oromo with political clout, also expressed doubts about the PP's formation in November, though party officials say he and Mr Abiy have been ironing out their differences since then.
"The merger is not right and timely, as we are in transition, we are on borrowed time. Dissolving the regional party to which the public entrusted their demands is betraying them," Mr Lemma said at the time.
For Mr Abiy's supporters, he offers the best hope of getting Ethiopia's myriad ethnic groups to work together, and avoid the country's disintegration.
They are confident that he will demonstrate his popularity by leading the PP to victory in the election, though its legitimacy is bound to be questioned if the crackdown in Ambo continues.
Emiliano Sala crash: Pilot Ibbotson 'not licensed for flight'

By Jenny Johnson & Kayley Thomas BBC News13 March 2020


Related Topics
Emiliano Sala death

Emiliano Sala: Catalogue of errors led to plane crash

The pilot of the plane that crashed killing footballer Emiliano Sala was not licensed to fly the aircraft, a report has found.

Sala, 28, and pilot David Ibbotson died in the crash in the English Channel, two days after the Argentine signed for Cardiff City in January 2019.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch published its findings on Friday.

It said Sala would have been "deeply unconscious" from carbon monoxide poisoning at the time.

Chief Inspector of Air Accidents Crispin Orr said it had been a "long and complex" investigation, and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was probing whether there had been breaches of the Air Navigation Order.

The Sala family said they were "grateful" the report had been published but said it left "many questions" to be answered at the upcoming inquest.

"It is crucial that the information held by the police and which went into compiling this report now be made available to the coroner and in turn to the family," they added in a statement.

They said they "remain distraught by their loss" but were determined to "find the full truth of how and why he died".

Cardiff City FC said the club was "encouraged to read that the CAA is determined to tackle illegal activities by pursuing those involved".

No further action over Sala manslaughter arrest
Cardiff establish Sala memorial trust
In pictures: Nantes pay tribute to Sala

Sala was travelling from Nantes, in France, to Cardiff on 21 January 2019, when the single-engine Piper Malibu N264DB aircraft in which he was travelling lost contact with air traffic control north of Guernsey.

Mr Ibbotson lost control of the plane while descending to avoid cloud and he was probably also affected by carbon monoxide, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded.

The plane began to break up in mid-air as the pilot tried to regain control, investigators found.

His efforts to pull up from its final dive caused the tail fin and then the outer edges of both wings to shear off before it hit the sea near Guernsey at an estimated 270mph (434kph).
Image copyrightDAVID IBBOTSONImage captionDavid Ibbotson's body has not been found

The AAIB report found Mr Ibbotson, 59, of Crowle in North Lincolnshire, was not qualified to fly at night and was inexperienced at using the plane's instruments, rather than flying by sight.

His rating for that type of aircraft had expired in November 2018, invalidating his licence for flying that plane.

"Significant evidence" was found that Mr Ibbotson had been expecting to be paid for the flight, despite not being licensed to carry passengers.

The investigation concluded that "neither the plane nor the pilot had the required licences or permissions to operate commercially".

The plane's autopilot had been diagnosed as having an intermittent fault and should have been labelled "inoperative".
'I'm scared'

Sala was heading to his first training session with Cardiff City since signing for them in a £15m deal.

A voice message to close friends in Argentina, in which he says, "I'm in a plane that seems to be falling apart," and ending, "I'm scared," was sent while the plane was taxiing on the runway.

The plane took off from Nantes Atlantique Airport at 19:15 GMT on 21 January.

It disappeared from radar 22 nautical miles north of Guernsey about an hour later.
Image copyright AAIB
The final radar trace of the aircraft was recorded at 2016:34 hours

Sala's body was found in the plane wreckage on the seabed in early February. A post-mortem examination found he died from head and trunk injuries.

Mr Ibbotson's body has never been found.

Dave Edwards, chief executive of the Air Charter Association, said of the findings: "This flight was clearly an illegal charter, something we've said for a long time needs to stop.

"I think what's most sad is that there were probably about seven opportunities throughout the sequence where this flight could have stopped, and in a commercial environment it would have stopped, but in this case it just carried on through those levels until the ultimate moment of impact.

"Everything that could go wrong sadly did go wrong."

Radar and simulator evidence, photographs and video footage of the wreckage enabled investigators to piece together its trajectory in the four-and-a-half minutes between the pilot's final contact with air traffic control and the moment when it crashed.
Image copyrightAAIB Image 
Photographs of the plane's wreckage show the damage done to the aircraft

They believe carbon monoxide (CO) was leaking into the cabin through the plane's heating system from the exhaust.

Toxicology tests on Sala's blood found sufficient levels to cause a seizure, heart attack or unconsciousness.

"The pathologist considered he would almost certainly have been deeply unconscious at impact," the report states.

But it is thought Mr Ibbotson was still conscious and flying the plane in the final moments of the flight.

The AAIB's report includes a number of recommendations for aviation regulatory bodies, including a call for audible CO detectors to be fitted in all planes.

A pre-inquest review is scheduled to be held at Bournemouth Coroner's Court on Monday.
Analysis by Kayley Thomas, BBC Wales News

After the revelation last summer about fatal levels of CO in Emiliano Sala's blood, one of the lingering questions about this crash has been what about the pilot?

Surely David Ibbotson would have been subjected to similar levels of CO, making it impossible for him to fly the plane? No, says the AAIB.

While the pilot's body has never been found, investigators say previous plane crashes show the poisonous gas affects people differently, adding that the evidence suggests Mr Ibbotson must have been affected at the lower end of the spectrum.

The AAIB wants all single-engine piston planes to be fitted with CO detectors, but regulators have been reticent, saying plane design and regular inspections mitigate for CO poisoning.

The plane had a visual inspection of its exhaust 11 flying hours before the crash, on the basis of it being used privately.

Had it been licensed to take paying passengers, as it did on this flight, it would have needed a more rigorous pressure test of its exhaust to check for cracks or leaks.

That still might not have revealed a potential problem, but a cheap CO detector would have alerted the pilot to the presence of the deadly gas in his cabin at the first instance.

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Canadian and Italian kidnapped in Burkina Faso turn up safe in Mali
Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGESImage captionLuca Tacchetto (left) and Édith Blais have not publicly spoken about their escape

A Canadian woman and an Italian man kidnapped in Burkina Faso in 2018 are said to be in good health and spirits after arriving in neighbouring Mali.

Édith Blais and Luca Tacchetto, both in their 30s, apparently escaped and were picked up by UN forces before being transferred to Mali's capital, Bamako.

They appeared bemused when officials greeted them with elbows, before the pair were told of new social etiquette measures to help curb coronavirus.

Mali said no ransom had been paid.

None of the many jihadist groups in the region has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

Plans are now being made to repatriate the couple.

In a statement, Canadian Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that "Canada is very relieved" that the pair "are now free from captivity".

He thanked the governments of Burkina Faso and Mali, as well as the UN mission in Mali and other partners for "their assistance and co-operation over the past year in this matter".


The pair were wearing clothes of the regional Tuareg people and apparently stopped a passing car and told the driver to take them to the nearest UN post, according to AFP news agency.

However, Ms Blais and Mr Tacchetto have not publicly spoken about how they escaped captivity.

They disappeared on 15 December 2018 in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso.

At the time they were travelling in Western Africa and were making their way to Togo for a humanitarian project.

Canada has issued travel advice for Burkina Faso, due to terrorism and kidnapping.

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MARTIAL LAW
Here is how Trump could abuse his new powers now that he has declared a national emergency



March 14, 2020 By Matthew Chapman

President Donald Trump has officially declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency. In doing so, be potentially unlocks federal funding to numerous regional outbreaks, much to the relief of state health officials around the country.

But there is a dark side. According to Politico’s Josh Gerstein, a national emergency declaration also grants Trump a broad package of new executive powers — some of which are clearly ripe for abuse against the American people.



“Federal law gives Trump vast emergency powers in times of pandemic,” wrote Gerstein. “He could direct the quarantine of people arriving in the United States who exhibit certain symptoms or even if they’re just suspected of having the virus. He could have the federal government detain individuals if their illness might wind up crossing state lines. And under regulations revised and reissued just before Trump entered office, the government can stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease. Some even interpret the statute as meaning a president could deploy the military to cordon off a city or state.”

Many experts appear to be aware of the risk of giving Trump such powers.

“We can’t divorce this from the context of a president who has shown a willingness to abuse emergency power,” said the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elizabeth Goitein.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) similarly warned of what could happen. “As other steps are considered, the president must not overstep his authority or indulge his autocratic tendencies for purposes not truly related to this public health crisis.”