But The World Isn’t Doing Enough to Protect Forests
Jennifer Fergesen
Jennifer Fergesen
TIME
Tue, October 18, 2022
BRAZIL-UN-COP26-CLIMATE-AMAZON
Aerial view of a burnt area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia state, Brazil, on Sept. 15, 2021. The Amazon, the world's biggest rainforest, is known as the "lungs of the Earth." But it is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs. Credit - MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP—Getty Images
People breathe out carbon dioxide, trees breathe in carbon dioxide. It’s one of the first things children learn about the carbon cycle, the paths carbon takes as it moves among the living and nonliving things that make up the planet. That might be part of the reason trees and forests have long been a focal point of the carbon sequestration conversation. Dozens of companies have committed to planting and protecting trees as part of their efforts to counteract greenhouse gas emissions, and by 2030 the Trillion Trees Campaign is aiming to increase the number of trees in the world by one third.
Tree planting sounds great and makes for striking photo-ops of CEOs and presidents turning soil with golden shovels—and there’s compelling evidence that both new trees and existing forests can help bring down the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But trees’ and forests’ role in global warming is more complex than it may seem. Anyone hoping to harness the power of trees in the fight against global warming needs to appreciate that complexity.
Forest protection and tree planting projects predate the idea of net-zero: The Trillion Trees Campaign is a continuation of the Billion Trees Campaign of the early 2000s, which was inspired by the Green Belt Movement that started in Kenya in the 1970s. The current number comes from a much-cited 2015 paper that calculated that planting an additional 1.2 trillion trees would absorb the equivalent of 10 years of carbon emissions. A later 2019 paper calculated that 1 trillion trees could fit on about 2.2 million acres of available land, though its definition of “available” has been contested.
Remembering Basic Science
How would trees pull off this feat? In a word, photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) are the ingredients for this recipe; light serves as the energy that helps the plant reassemble the hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon into carbohydrates (CH2O) and oxygen (O2).
Tue, October 18, 2022
BRAZIL-UN-COP26-CLIMATE-AMAZON
Aerial view of a burnt area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia state, Brazil, on Sept. 15, 2021. The Amazon, the world's biggest rainforest, is known as the "lungs of the Earth." But it is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs. Credit - MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP—Getty Images
People breathe out carbon dioxide, trees breathe in carbon dioxide. It’s one of the first things children learn about the carbon cycle, the paths carbon takes as it moves among the living and nonliving things that make up the planet. That might be part of the reason trees and forests have long been a focal point of the carbon sequestration conversation. Dozens of companies have committed to planting and protecting trees as part of their efforts to counteract greenhouse gas emissions, and by 2030 the Trillion Trees Campaign is aiming to increase the number of trees in the world by one third.
Tree planting sounds great and makes for striking photo-ops of CEOs and presidents turning soil with golden shovels—and there’s compelling evidence that both new trees and existing forests can help bring down the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But trees’ and forests’ role in global warming is more complex than it may seem. Anyone hoping to harness the power of trees in the fight against global warming needs to appreciate that complexity.
Forest protection and tree planting projects predate the idea of net-zero: The Trillion Trees Campaign is a continuation of the Billion Trees Campaign of the early 2000s, which was inspired by the Green Belt Movement that started in Kenya in the 1970s. The current number comes from a much-cited 2015 paper that calculated that planting an additional 1.2 trillion trees would absorb the equivalent of 10 years of carbon emissions. A later 2019 paper calculated that 1 trillion trees could fit on about 2.2 million acres of available land, though its definition of “available” has been contested.
Remembering Basic Science
How would trees pull off this feat? In a word, photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) are the ingredients for this recipe; light serves as the energy that helps the plant reassemble the hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon into carbohydrates (CH2O) and oxygen (O2).
Plants use some of the carbohydrates they make through respiration. This is the same process people use when we convert the food we eat into energy; like people, plants breathe out some carbon dioxide when they respirate. On average, plants emit about half of the carbon dioxide they absorb and store the rest in their bodies as biomass while they’re alive. Trees can store more carbon in their bodies and hold onto it longer than most plants because they’re larger, denser, and live longer than the average blade of grass.
For nearly 100 million years after trees evolved in the Carboniferous period, nothing could break down the tough lignin that gives wood its rigidity, so dead trees piled up in swampy deposits that hardened under pressure and over time. Some of these deposits became the coal seams that are now mined and burned, re-releasing the carbon stored by ancient forests. The Carboniferous period is named after these carbon-rich coal seams, surrounded by layers of rock where geologists can find fossils of trees, ferns, marine animals, and other creatures from a bygone world.
Today, however, fungi have evolved to be able to break down lignin, and trees eventually decay after they die like the rest of us. Fungi and other decomposers also produce carbon dioxide through respiration, so the carbon that trees store can be re-released to the atmosphere as they decompose. Trees also release their carbon if they burn, either in wildfires (which have increased in frequency and intensity with global warming) or the slash-and-burn practices employed by farmers and ranchers that clear forest for agriculture. That’s a key detail to keep in mind when considering the role of forests in combating global warming.
A Vital Carbon Sink at Risk
Despite these disturbances and the slower process of decay, earth’s forests remain a net-sink for carbon dioxide. The planet is currently home to about 4 billion hectares of forest, which collectively emit 8.1 billion metric tons of carbon each year and absorb 16 billion metric tons. The net absorption of 7.6 billion metric tons is more than the United States emits in a year and about 30% of the amount the world emits in a year.
One might assume that the most significant carbon sinks would be tropical rainforests, the most biodiverse biomes on the terrestrial earth. But Southeast Asia’s tropical rainforests, one of the world’s three largest systems, are now a net source of carbon emissions due to fires, clearing for plantations, and peat soil drainage. The Amazon rainforest is on the brink of becoming a net source due to similar disturbances. The world’s second largest tropical rainforest, located in the Congo River Basin, is the only rainforest in the top three that is still a significant carbon sink. These dire statistics are part of the reason why protecting forests, especially rainforests, has become a key talking point around decarbonizing the atmosphere and slowing global warming.
“Whether it’s in Amazonia or the Tongass Rainforest in Alaska … those are all the lungs of our planet,” says Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at Wild Heritage, an environmental organization based in Berkeley, California. “The logging and development that takes place in those forests, that forever changes their ability to absorb and hang onto carbon.” DellaSala says that businesses can avoid being part of the problem by avoiding wood and fiber sourced from old-growth forests.
Many other globally traded products are grown on land cleared from rainforests, including beef, cacao, and palm oil. The complex commodities market can make it difficult to account for which products are grown on former rainforest land, but companies such as Nestlé and IKEA have published “forest positive” plans to reduce the amount of deforestation involved in their supply chains through efforts such as satellite monitoring and supply chain mapping.
The Carbon Offset Problem
Some businesses are investing directly in forest protection through the carbon offset market. Organizations such as the Coalition for Rainforest Nations and the Rainforest Trust sell the opportunity to protect the rainforest for as little as $5 an acre, money which they say goes to Indigenous people, local governments, and other groups who might otherwise choose to cut down the rainforest for economic reasons. Companies can buy these credits to offset their own greenhouse gasses as part of the carbon accounting involved in reaching net-zero.
However, ProPublica reported in 2019 that several forest protection projects that had received money from carbon credit sales were not keeping their promises; some protected plots were cleared even though people had been paid to keep them forested. Even when the people involved stick to their commitments, forests set aside for carbon offsets can be burned by wildfires, releasing their carbon.
Additionally, there is just not enough land available for carbon projects (and without impacting food security). A 2021 report from Oxfam notes that “the total amount of land required for planned carbon removal could potentially be five times the size of India, or the equivalent of all the farmland on the planet.”
Some carbon offset projects involve planting new trees, but these plantings do not absorb as much carbon as mature, natural forests. Still, each tree can absorb tens of pounds of carbon dioxide in a year, and carbon credit sellers, governments, and organizations are all getting involved in tree planting “to the point where we’re also now concerned about the supply chain for tree planting to make sure that we’re going to be able to have enough seeds to meet that demand,” says Joe Fargione, lead scientist for North America at The Nature Conservancy.
Fargione says that the most effective tree planting projects focus on restoring existing forests, rather than trying to create new ones. If planted in the wrong environment, trees can cause an increase in carbon emissions through side effects that may be difficult to anticipate ahead of time. For example, planting trees in grasslands can increase the risk of fire, releasing the carbon stored naturally in that environment’s plants and soil. Draining peatlands to plant trees releases the carbon those wetland ecosystems can hold onto for centuries.
As much as they love trees and forests, scientists like Fargione and DellaSala agree that we can’t rely on them to take care of the glut of carbon dioxide emissions humans have added to the atmosphere. To maintain trees’ current role as a sink for a large slice of carbon dioxide emissions, the priority should be to restore and maintain the mature forests that still exist, finding better ways to protect them against ourselves.
—With reporting by Jennifer Junghans
This article is part of a series on key topics in the climate crisis for time.com and CO2.com, a division of TIME that helps companies reduce their impact on the planet. For more information, go to co2.com
Planting trees – and hope – in a flood-prone Nigerian town
Ahmad Adedimeji Amobi
Tue, October 18, 2022
A quarter of a century after the event, Soladoye Gbenjo still remembers the storm that changed everything. For months during the rainy season, battering rains tore through Igbajo, his rural community in the southwestern Nigerian state of Osun. Then came a wind that tore off the roof of his house, and dumped most of his belongings in the surrounding flooded fields.
Mr. Gbenjo, an agriculturist, realized something: His house, like most in the district of steep, windswept hills, was too open to the elements.
After replacing his roof, Mr. Gbenjo did the only other thing he could think of to make his home safer – he planted dozens of trees around it.
Mr. Gbenjo did not know it then, but that decision was a seed that would come to fruition more than two decades later, as the community found itself grappling with the increasing ravages of climate change.
“I developed an interest in tree planting from what happened to me,” says Mr. Gbenjo, now an octogenarian, pointing with a trembling hand at the dozens of trees he has planted around his house over the decades.
Trees can help mitigate damage in storm- and flood-prone areas. Leaf canopies reduce erosion caused by falling rain and provide a surface area for water to evaporate; and tree branches and roots also act as a drag on wind and floodwater, reducing the speed of both.
Nigerians need all the help they can get tackling floods, which are predicted by scientists to rise as the climate emergency gathers pace. Already the country has one of the highest levels of deforestation in the world. As the oil-producing nation grapples with a rapidly growing population, trees are being lost to urbanization, wood burning, and environmental disasters such as oil spills. An annual deforestation rate of about 3.5% translated to the loss of around 14,587 hectares in 2020. Today, Africa’s most populous nation has lost all but 4% of its primary forest.
In recent weeks, much of Nigeria has been hit by devastating floods that have affected 29 of the country’s 36 states.
Caught off guard by extreme weather events, Nigeria’s government has struggled to contain the catastrophic fallout. Widespread deluges caused by extreme rainfall and the release of excess water from a dam in neighboring Cameroon has displaced 1.4 million citizens and killed 500 in the past month alone, according to government officials.
But in Igbajo, residents have long since banded together to try to plug the gaps left by government inaction. As is common in Nigeria, the community of around 25,000 residents has an informal association tasked with resolving local disputes and issues that rarely reach state – or even local – government offices. As floods ravage large parts of the country, residents in Igbajo have been largely spared in part thanks to that association.
When Mr. Gbenjo began planting his trees 25 years ago, the chairman of the Igbajo Development Association immediately saw the advantages it would bring. And so, in a series of spontaneous gatherings, Shola Fanowopo asked the well-respected Mr. Gbenjo to talk to other community members about the benefits of planting trees.
So convinced were locals by the plan, that they pooled money to buy about 40 hectares of land to turn into a juvenile forest. That forest, in turn, would serve as a reservoir for eventually repopulating the entire district’s depleted trees, they hoped.
But first, they needed the actual trees.
Olalere Ajayi, a local farmer, was one of dozens who was convinced to sign up after seeing a neighbor’s roof torn off during a violent storm.
That made him realize the “need to protect my house,” Mr. Ajayi says, while walking through rows of young saplings on the edge of the community.
Within a year, almost every compound had rows of seedlings sprouting around houses. Residents planted gmelina, afara, and maple saplings common to the area, hardy and fast-growing trees.
Out in the surrounding fields, farmers also planted teak trees – whose firm grain makes it particularly useful for weather control – alongside their cash crops of cocoa, cassava, and yams.
In the first year, about 2,000 trees were planted, Mr. Fanowopo says. This year, volunteers are on track to plant a whopping 20,000 saplings, making a total of 50,000 trees planted since the project launched.
Like about 40 other residents who regularly volunteer, Mr Ajayi can often be found pitching in, either planting seedlings into small nylon bags; spraying growing saplings to keep insects and disease at bay; or digging older saplings to transplant them to where they’re needed.
Not all of those trees make it. Some seedlings don’t germinate, while others die after being uprooted to be transferred.
“The weather,” Mr. Gbenjo notes dryly, often doesn’t help.
Then there’s a lack of funding to maintain and fuel the trucks used to transport the trees across different locations – now even more difficult amid rocketing costs of diesel. And with inflation hitting a 17-year high, residents of the rural community are having to tighten belts, meaning the project is being put on the back burner.
Nigeria has announced several strategies to tackle deforestation, such as REDD+ – a United Nations-backed project launched at the COP26 climate summit last year, which aimed to limit the number of trees being cut down. But local residents and researchers say such plans rarely translated into results on the ground, with most state governments lacking the financing and data needed to make significant progress.
Agriculturists say initiatives like the one in Igbajo could be successfully transplanted to other communities, though that would require more input from government agencies.
“Hopefully the government will wake up and take action,” says Ugwu Shedrach, a young agriculturist and soil scientist in Nigeria’s central Nasarawa State.
In Igbajo, residents say they are determined to press ahead regardless. Watching recent floods unleashed across the country prompted Funke Abu to volunteer her time toward a planting expedition. “It took me two days to pick 1,000 gmelina seedlings,” she says, weary but satisfied.
Ahmad Adedimeji Amobi
Tue, October 18, 2022
A quarter of a century after the event, Soladoye Gbenjo still remembers the storm that changed everything. For months during the rainy season, battering rains tore through Igbajo, his rural community in the southwestern Nigerian state of Osun. Then came a wind that tore off the roof of his house, and dumped most of his belongings in the surrounding flooded fields.
Mr. Gbenjo, an agriculturist, realized something: His house, like most in the district of steep, windswept hills, was too open to the elements.
After replacing his roof, Mr. Gbenjo did the only other thing he could think of to make his home safer – he planted dozens of trees around it.
Mr. Gbenjo did not know it then, but that decision was a seed that would come to fruition more than two decades later, as the community found itself grappling with the increasing ravages of climate change.
“I developed an interest in tree planting from what happened to me,” says Mr. Gbenjo, now an octogenarian, pointing with a trembling hand at the dozens of trees he has planted around his house over the decades.
Trees can help mitigate damage in storm- and flood-prone areas. Leaf canopies reduce erosion caused by falling rain and provide a surface area for water to evaporate; and tree branches and roots also act as a drag on wind and floodwater, reducing the speed of both.
Nigerians need all the help they can get tackling floods, which are predicted by scientists to rise as the climate emergency gathers pace. Already the country has one of the highest levels of deforestation in the world. As the oil-producing nation grapples with a rapidly growing population, trees are being lost to urbanization, wood burning, and environmental disasters such as oil spills. An annual deforestation rate of about 3.5% translated to the loss of around 14,587 hectares in 2020. Today, Africa’s most populous nation has lost all but 4% of its primary forest.
In recent weeks, much of Nigeria has been hit by devastating floods that have affected 29 of the country’s 36 states.
Caught off guard by extreme weather events, Nigeria’s government has struggled to contain the catastrophic fallout. Widespread deluges caused by extreme rainfall and the release of excess water from a dam in neighboring Cameroon has displaced 1.4 million citizens and killed 500 in the past month alone, according to government officials.
But in Igbajo, residents have long since banded together to try to plug the gaps left by government inaction. As is common in Nigeria, the community of around 25,000 residents has an informal association tasked with resolving local disputes and issues that rarely reach state – or even local – government offices. As floods ravage large parts of the country, residents in Igbajo have been largely spared in part thanks to that association.
When Mr. Gbenjo began planting his trees 25 years ago, the chairman of the Igbajo Development Association immediately saw the advantages it would bring. And so, in a series of spontaneous gatherings, Shola Fanowopo asked the well-respected Mr. Gbenjo to talk to other community members about the benefits of planting trees.
So convinced were locals by the plan, that they pooled money to buy about 40 hectares of land to turn into a juvenile forest. That forest, in turn, would serve as a reservoir for eventually repopulating the entire district’s depleted trees, they hoped.
But first, they needed the actual trees.
Olalere Ajayi, a local farmer, was one of dozens who was convinced to sign up after seeing a neighbor’s roof torn off during a violent storm.
That made him realize the “need to protect my house,” Mr. Ajayi says, while walking through rows of young saplings on the edge of the community.
Within a year, almost every compound had rows of seedlings sprouting around houses. Residents planted gmelina, afara, and maple saplings common to the area, hardy and fast-growing trees.
Out in the surrounding fields, farmers also planted teak trees – whose firm grain makes it particularly useful for weather control – alongside their cash crops of cocoa, cassava, and yams.
In the first year, about 2,000 trees were planted, Mr. Fanowopo says. This year, volunteers are on track to plant a whopping 20,000 saplings, making a total of 50,000 trees planted since the project launched.
Like about 40 other residents who regularly volunteer, Mr Ajayi can often be found pitching in, either planting seedlings into small nylon bags; spraying growing saplings to keep insects and disease at bay; or digging older saplings to transplant them to where they’re needed.
Not all of those trees make it. Some seedlings don’t germinate, while others die after being uprooted to be transferred.
“The weather,” Mr. Gbenjo notes dryly, often doesn’t help.
Then there’s a lack of funding to maintain and fuel the trucks used to transport the trees across different locations – now even more difficult amid rocketing costs of diesel. And with inflation hitting a 17-year high, residents of the rural community are having to tighten belts, meaning the project is being put on the back burner.
Nigeria has announced several strategies to tackle deforestation, such as REDD+ – a United Nations-backed project launched at the COP26 climate summit last year, which aimed to limit the number of trees being cut down. But local residents and researchers say such plans rarely translated into results on the ground, with most state governments lacking the financing and data needed to make significant progress.
Agriculturists say initiatives like the one in Igbajo could be successfully transplanted to other communities, though that would require more input from government agencies.
“Hopefully the government will wake up and take action,” says Ugwu Shedrach, a young agriculturist and soil scientist in Nigeria’s central Nasarawa State.
In Igbajo, residents say they are determined to press ahead regardless. Watching recent floods unleashed across the country prompted Funke Abu to volunteer her time toward a planting expedition. “It took me two days to pick 1,000 gmelina seedlings,” she says, weary but satisfied.
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