Researchers from around the world have determined that government and corporate climate promises that heavily rely on planting trees are unfeasible, according to a new assessment called the Land Gap Report. This is due to the likelihood that there isn’t enough land on Earth to satisfy all of these promises to offset carbon emissions.
Researchers determined the amount of land required to implement current worldwide net-zero plans, which concentrate on tree planting activities, and discovered that they require 1.2 billion hectares (almost 3 billion acres), or an area larger than the United States. The size of the world’s base of food production is the quantity of land required to fulfill these carbon-offsetting obligations.
According to Inside Climate News, the lead author of the Land Gap Report and a researcher at the University of Melbourne, Kate Dooley, countries are piling up on land pledges to avoid the difficult work of drastically reducing emissions from fossil fuels, decarbonizing food systems, and halting the destruction of forests and other ecosystems.
Reforestation is a crucial component in halting climate change, according to scientists, but other measures are also required. The amount of acreage required to achieve these goals would disrupt ecosystems, put pressure on the rights of Indigenous peoples, and jeopardize food security, making extensive tree planting unlikely.
According to the report, local communities and indigenous peoples who have solid land rights already provide food sustainably for their communities and do a much better job than governments and businesses at protecting forests and biodiversity.
Governments and businesses should start decreasing emissions directly, according to the report’s authors, rather than concentrating on carbon offsets, particularly through land use efforts.
According to Dooley, who was quoted by Reuters, “Countries see land like an unlimited resource in their climate strategies.” “Planting trees on an amount of land comparable to half of the world’s present croplands simply won’t work.”
In order to achieve this, the authors advise organizations to concentrate on a four-pronged strategy: increasing transparency regarding the extent, use, and ownership of land in climate pledges; protecting primary ecosystems as opposed to planting new trees; ensuring that efforts to mitigate climate change build on and strengthen Indigenous rights; and promoting multifunctional strategies that support socio-ecological resilience and uphold human rights.
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The net in net zero must not take attention away from current emissions reductions: According to the report’s executive summary, framing climate targets as net zero runs the danger of undermining mitigation efforts by permitting a trade-off between emissions reductions and removals. The degree to which governments are depending on land removal to satisfy their climate mitigation pledges is hidden by targets based on net accounting.
Not to add that maintaining primary forests can aid in increasing carbon storage, whereas planting monocultures of young trees makes the trees less robust to fires, pests, disease, and drought.
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The paper concludes that land-based carbon removals only contribute significantly to mitigation efforts if they are followed by swift and significant reductions in fossil fuel emissions from all sources. They must complement and not cancel out fossil fuel and other emission reductions.
