Reforestation & Climate Change

[Lisbeth]

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Planting trees is a strategy that several countries are pursuing to fight climate change. But how effective is this approach? Experts suggest that there are many factors to take into account when reforesting.

Read more at: https://news.mongabay.com/2021/05/is-...

Check out Mongabay's Databases on global reforestation:

Conservation Effectiveness https://www.conservationeffectiveness...
Reforestation Directory https://reforestation.app

[Lisbeth]

SAHEL'S GREAT GREEN WALL

Africa’s ambitious reforestation megaproject gets a big boost at COP26


(Photo: Greatgreenwall.org)

By Ethan van Diemen | 02 Nov 2021

It’s an ambitious megaproject that aims to create the largest living structure on the planet. By 2030, the Great Green Wall aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million jobs in rural areas of Sahel. And it just got a big boost in Glasgow.
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The Great Green Wall just got a major boost at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, with announcements of support coming from Jeff Bezos, Prince Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron and Mauritania’s president, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani.

The Great Green Wall (GGW) is described as an “African-led movement with an epic ambition to grow an 8,000km natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa”.

According to its website, “Once complete, the Great Green Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet, three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef.”

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The World Economic Forum notes that “The Sahel is a 5,900-kilometre belt of land below the Sahara Desert, stretching across the breadth of Africa. It is a semi-arid region, known for its variable rainfall.” It is here that this massive reforestation megaproject, in one of the poorest and most climate-change vulnerable regions on the planet, is taking shape. Already, droughts, famine and conflict over resources are causing immense suffering and hardship. The initiative is an attempt to ameliorate these conditions with nature.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the GGW stretches along the southern margin of the Sahara Desert, snaking from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea. More specifically, it stretches from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east. The total area of the GGW extends to 156 million hectares, with the largest intervention zones located in Niger, Mali, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The once verdant border regions of the Sahara have given way to increased desertification, in large part due to climate change and unsustainable land practices, leading to land degradation and the expansion of the Sahara Desert. According to the World Bank, there were 30 million food-insecure people in this region prior to the coronavirus pandemic, and that number continues to grow.

By 2030, the GGW initiative aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million jobs in rural areas.

In January, Macron announced at the One Planet Summit for Biodiversity, co-organised by France, the United Nation and World Bank, that the initiative had received at least $14.326-billion in new funding.

Though more than a decade old, the initiative has got a shot in the arm thanks to wealthy benefactors, European monarchs and political leaders at COP26.

At a meeting at the conference co-hosted by Macron, Prince Charles said that there are some 700 million hectares of degraded land in Africa and that the Great Green Wall initiative offers a “precious opportunity” to restore land, forest and biodiversity while also addressing the social, economic and environmental impacts of land degradation and desertification.

Bezos, Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest men, pledged $1-billion at the conference, via the Bezos Earth Fund, to support landscape restoration.



Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in a statement on Monday said that, “The fight for the climate goes hand in hand with the fight for nature. The Great Green Wall is a beautiful example of that and it is a beautiful example of sustainable development at continental scale. It can and will deliver significant economic, social and environmental benefits.

“I was struck to read that the Wall will sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon. That is as much carbon as all forests and land in the EU have removed in 2018. At the same time, it is expected to create 10 million jobs in rural areas by 2030.

“We will contribute to different pillars of the Great Green Wall, and thus supporting local communities, while restoring the environment and reversing biodiversity loss. Sustainable land management is key to meet the development needs of growing populations in Africa.

“Around 45% of Africa’s land is impacted by desertification. Fighting land degradation is thus key to ensure food security. It is about protecting the livelihoods of millions of people. The Great Green Wall shows how climate action combines local action and global ambition.” DM/OBP

[Richprins]

This is brilliant!

But there may not be enough rain...

[Lisbeth]

It was started ages ago. I remember seeing a documentary on TV. Certainly, it is not enough to plant trees if there is no rain

[Lisbeth]

A 150-year-old note from Charles Darwin is inspiring a change in the way forests are planted

November 4, 2021 - Rob MacKenzie, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Birmingham. Christine Foyer, Professor of Plant Sciences, University of Birmingham

More than 150 years ago Victorian biologist Charles Darwin made a powerful observation: that a mixture of species planted together often grow more strongly than species planted individually.

It has taken a century and a half — ironically about as long as it can take to grow an oak to harvest — and a climate crisis to make policymakers and land owners take Darwin’s idea seriously and apply it to trees.

There is no human technology that can compete with forests for take-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and its storage. Darwin’s idea of growing lots of different plants together to increase the overall yield is now being explored by leading academics, who research forests and climate change.

Scientists and policymakers from Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US came together recently to discuss if Darwin’s idea provides a way to plant new forests that absorb and store carbon securely.

Why plant more forests

Planting more forests is a potent tool for mitigating the climate crisis, but forests are like complex machines with millions of parts. Tree planting can cause ecological damage when carried out poorly, particularly if there is no commitment to diversity of planting. Following Darwin’s thinking, there is growing awareness that the best, healthiest forests are ones with the greatest variety of trees - and trees of various ages.

Forests following this model promise to grow two to fourfold more strongly, maximising carbon capture while also maximising resilience to disease outbreaks, rapid climate change and extreme weather.


Images showing how trees grow more strongly when planted in diverse forests, compare the size of the trees at 11-years-old. The tree on the right was planted in a more diverse area. Author provided

In mixed forests, each species accesses different sources of nutrients from the others, leading to higher yields overall. And those thicker stems are made mostly of carbon.

Mixed forests are also often more resilient to disease by diluting populations of pests and pathogens, organisms that cause disease.

Darwin’s prescient observation is tucked away in chapter four of his 1859 famous book On the Origin of the Species. Studies of this “Darwin effect” has spawned a vast ecological literature. Yet it is still so outside of the mainstream thinking on forestry that, until now, little major funding has been available to prompt use of this technique.

Darwin also famously described evolution by natural selection, a process by which genes evolve to be fit for their environment. Unfortunately for the planet, human-induced environmental change outstrips the evolution of genes for larger, slower reproducing, organisms, like trees.


A man studies an exhibit on Charles Darwin and the history of science at Darwin’s home in Kent. Vicky Jirayu/Shutterstock

Modern gene-editing techniques – direct DNA surgery – can help speed things up once careful laboratory work identifies the key genes. But only evolution of human practice – that is, changing what we do – is fast and far-reaching enough to rebalance the carbon cycle and bring us back within safe planetary limits.

Healthier trees capture more carbon

At our meeting we discussed a study of Norbury Park estate in central England, which describes how — using the Darwin effect and other climate-sensitive measures — the estate now captures over 5,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, making it quite possibly the most carbon-negative land in the UK. Such impressive statistics don’t happen by accident or by sticking some trees in the ground and hoping; care and ecological nous is needed.

Trees of different ages also continuously provide harvestable timber and so steady jobs, in stark contrast to the other methods of forestry, where large areas are felled and cleared at the same time.

The UK government, like other administrations, has laid down requirements for responsible large-scale tree planting. These requirements continue to be revised and improved. There are still vital questions about which trees we should plant, where we should plant them, and what to do with them once they’ve grown.

It has been said that it is impossible to plant a forest, but it should certainly be possible to design a plantation that will blossom into a forest for future generations. We need forests to be a practical, dependable, and just response to our climate and biodiversity crises, and Darwin has shown us the way.

[Richprins]