Source: Climate change: Planting new forests ‘can do more harm than good’ – BBC News
Rather than benefiting the environment, large-scale tree planting may do the opposite, two new studies have found.
One paper says that financial incentives to plant trees can backfire and reduce biodiversity with little impact on carbon emissions.
A separate project found that the amount of carbon that new forests can absorb may be overestimated.
The key message from both papers is that planting trees is not a simple climate solution.
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Over the past few years, the idea of planting trees as a low cost, high impact solution to climate change has really taken hold.
But scientists have urged caution against the headlong rush to plant new forests.
They point to the fact that in the Bonn Challenge nearly 80% of the commitments made to date involve planting monoculture plantations or a limited mix of trees that produce specific products such as fruit or rubber.
The authors of this new study have looked closely at the financial incentives given to private landowners to plant trees.
These payments are seen as a key element of increasing the number of trees significantly.
The study looked at the example of Chile, where a decree subsidising tree planting ran from 1974 to 2012, and was widely seen as a globally influential afforestation policy.
The law subsidised 75% of the costs of planting new forests.
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