8 billion trees criticism 8 billion trees criticism

But a growing number of scientists are warning that these massive projects can wreck natural ecosystems, dry up water supplies, damage agriculture, and push people off their land. Desktop, Screen, and Laptop: 1,030 kgs of CO 2 e. Desktops and laptops (the most typical working setups) are responsible for the majority of the IT carbon footprint. 8 Billion Trees was born on November 10th, 2018. This, to many, smacked of colonialism: By not excluding conservation areas and traditional rangelands, they say, these maps promote the idea that Africas natural heritage can be turned into industrial tree plantations to offset the rich worlds carbon emissions. Instead of this costly project, the government should have targeted deforestation with strict administrative measures, the senior government official said. If a person planted a tree every year for 20 years - and each one survived, which is highly unlikely - those 20 trees would take up about 1,000 pounds, or half a ton, of carbon dioxide per . As an added assurance, buyers can visit the. Instead, it is a social enterprise with a strong focus on awareness campaigns which means their administrative costs are too high to be a charity. In some areas, households burn over 10kg of wood every day. In July 2019, the British ecologist co-authored a study estimating that Earth had space for an extra trillion trees on land not used for agriculture or settlement. Needles of Blue Pine tree. The study, led by Jean-Franois Bastin, a postdoctoral researcher at Crowthers lab in ETH Zrich, Switzerland, was the second most featured climate paper in the media in 2019, according to one analysis. The project is also going to destroy natural water springs, he said, adding this could create an acute shortage of water as well as affecting the fertility of the land. Dont use reforestation as an excuse for cutting down old-growth forests, because its no substitute., Even Thomas Crowther has backpedaled on tree planting. Still, not all tree-planting initiatives are created equal. Since the British scientist was awarded a multimillion pound long-term grant in 2018 to form the Crowther Lab, his multidisciplinary team has been trying to map the ecology of the planet. Nobodys against trees, said Benioff, adding, This is a time of action, not words. But the subject of the forest restoration controversy is never far away. By some estimates, trees can be an enormous carbon sink. There are, however, environmentalists who support the project and dismiss the criticisms leveled against it. Shortly afterwards she wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times headlined To save the planet, dont plant trees. "Imagine billions of trees and calculate the total cost, which could have been diverted for clearing the river banks, ensuring the flow of water from rivers that would have led to natural growth of trees without spending any money," he said. Combining the latest biodiversity metrics with a global map of restoration projects, he hopes Restor will allow anyone with an internet connection to assess the impact of the programmes and bring more accountability and direction to conservation. That green pigment is responsible for and is extremely efficient at capturing and converting light rays into energy and food for the trees. When we asked them about their decision to do this, they gave us a candid response: Nature has its own mechanism for planting trees and you do not need to plant and look after them," the former forestry official said. There are many different reasons for this, but they all revolve around impact. 1 trillion trees really is also a symbol for ecosystem restoration, he recently said. The reports authors state, Our analysis of crediting errors demonstrates that a large fraction of the credits in the program do not reflect real climate benefits. This means that the state overestimated its offsets by a staggering 30 million tCO2e. However, the states analytical blunder isnt representative of Terrapasss legitimacy or suspected lack thereof. The fifth most populous country in the world with over 24% of its people living in poverty, Pakistan is one of the states most vulnerable to the changing climate. Then the carbon storage blows all the rest out of the water. Law agrees, saying the effects of aerosols are also a red herring. We deliberated for months before forming 8 Billion Trees, going back and forth on whether or not to register as a non-profit. For example, the aerosols create a faint haze. That is a little over half our annual emissions, but they emphasise that many of the strategies they studied would not be cost-effective: a more plausible figure would be 11-15 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. Trees are an integral part of many animals livelihood, supplying food and shelter most importantly. For instance, much of the land Crowther described as available for tree planting already has plants growing on it, all of them storing carbon, many of which would have to be removed, according to Sonia Seneviratne of ETH-Zurich and her colleagues. Tree-planting critics have pointed out that in some countries there is an inherent conflict between using land for trees and using it for agriculture to feed growing populations. 2:15 p.m. EST MR PRICE: Good afternoon. If we plant the right trees in the right places and manage them in the right way, we can accomplish a lot, says Wes Swaffar of American Forests, which leads the U.S. chapter of 1t.org. You can find a list of approved VVBs from several authorities like the American Carbon Registry and Verra.6. Kathleen Smart, a post-doctoral researcher at Rhodes University in South Africa, says that replacing surfaces like grasslands or deserts which, being pale, reflect more solar radiation into outer space with relatively dark-colored tree plantations can have a heating effect on a local level, and that regional-scale land-use changes have been shown to affect climate and rainfall patterns. So we, as scientists who disagree, are now working to identify valuable ecosystems where planting trees would be a bad idea.. Through people's empowerment, the 8 Billion Trees can plant more trees, rebuild even more habitats, and sequester even more carbon emissions, Chambers said. Exploring 'culture' in the broadest sense - from art, film and new media, to popular culture and social movements - in relation to contemporary issues such as globalisation, technology and social and cultural conflicts and identities. All Rights Reserved, By submitting your email, you agree to our. China is on track to plant 35 million hectares (87 million acres) of trees in its northern arid areas by 2050 to make a so-called Great Green Wall the size of Germany. Since the project has no substantial value, this renders the sold carbon credits useless. But its not always that simple. Hequestioned the transparency of the publicly funded budget that does not include transport and other costs. The findings have been published in leading journals, and Jane Goodall, David Attenborough and others cite Crowthers lab research. part one. secure the political rights of people who depend on forests. These chemicals stick together to form tiny floating particles called aerosols, which have complicated effects. The companys swift success fueled its growth into combatting other greenhouse gas (GHG) -emitting sectors like air travel and general energy consumption. Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the copyright act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, sch. We have cared for our lands and forests and the biodiversity they contain for generations. Planting trees can play a part in reducing carbon in the atmosphere but it cannot reverse global warming on its own (Credit: Getty Images). A study finds 1.8 billion trees and shrubs in the Sahara desert. High-profile programs aimed at planting billions of trees are being launched worldwide. The study also looked at regions that were best able to stop that from happening, and found that indigenous territories had the best success rates. * This article has been edited on 3 June 2020 to add details of the correction issued in Science on the paper by Thomas Crowther and his team. Planting trees can help with both, he says, but only if we do it right. The authors of the contested study stand by their work. Planting trees, the team wrote, is one of the most effective carbon drawdown solutions to date. Systematic over-crediting of forest offsets. CarbonPlan. Planting a . Retrieved July 17, 2021, from: https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/glossary/. In other words, if we stopped cutting down trees we would cut our annual emissions by about 10%. The Dave Matthews Band 2023 Tour has committed to help plant an additional one million trees with The Nature Conservancy's Plant a Billion Trees program, a global forest restoration effort, having fully funded three million trees from 2020 - 2022.With your help and with commitments from the band, The Dreaming Tree Wines and other tour partners, we can help advance this goal in an effort to . Launched in 2019, the project with support from the United Nations Environment Programme is aiming to plant 10 billion trees by 2023. We are aware of no other viable climate change solution that is quantitatively as large in terms of carbon drawdown, the authors from the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich said in their comments published in Science last October. Retrieved July 16, 2021, from https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/?category=summary&dashboard, 10Global Footprint Network. Please view our privacy policy for more information. As part of the provinces Billion Tree Tsunami, which began in 2014, the government gave free seedlings to landowners and paid them annually for every tree that survived. The researchers determined this area by mapping land with sufficient rainfall to support trees, but that is not currently occupied by forests, agriculture, or urban areas. (2021, June 15). During the 2020 WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Benioff announced that 300 companies and numerous governments have committed to hitting 1t.orgs target. In fact, some planting projects are clearly legitimate without them, because they have government contracts or otherwise. You dont need to plant a tree to regenerate a forest, Fleischman tells The Verge. Pakistan's former Inspector General of Forests Syed Mahmood Nasir agrees. Put simply, where will people and nations allow the large-scale planting of trees? part one, a global review of tree-planting initiatives. Everyone with a smartphone will be able to show where their purchases came from, says Crowther. As a buyer, you have many tools at your disposal to ensure the verifiability of your supported carbon offset programs and its easy to check the emissions you create by using an ecological footprint calculator. Unfortunately, climate change is certainly a polarizing issue. It is a project typical of his bigpicture thinking in ecology partly a consequence of a near fatal stroke in his mid-20s that has helped propel the 35-year-old from a postdoctoral researcher to a leading voice, with his own lab, in just a few years. In the first year alone, Terrapass gained more than 2,400 members and reduced 36 million pounds of CO2.1. . Tree-planting campaigns have taken off, with everyone from YouTube creators to high-powered CEOs embracing trees as a solution to the climate crisis. The science behind the press releases claim that new forests could suck in two-thirds of all historic human emissions remaining in the atmosphere was also questioned. Another big concern surrounding the call for planting a trillion trees is that it could distract from other efforts to slow down climate change, like stopping fossil fuel pollution and deforestation in the first place. One solution, says Archibald, is better information. These include counting the planets 0.4 sextillion nematodes, Earths most abundant animal. Restoring the worlds forests, wetlands and natural landscapes is an end in itself, Crowther is keen to emphasise, and carbon sequestration is not the primary focus. That global initiative could help his project scale this up to 50 to 60 billion trees across the country, Sadhguru said on the panel. They get new lives because you know, the World Economic Forum is talking about it, he says. Many struggle because they dont have the right information.. Science published six critiques of the paper, criticizing its methods and results, and the Crowther Lab was forced to issue corrections. Theyre assuming that snow covers going to stay there with warming, says Beverly Law of Oregon State University in Corvallis. Best Programs and Providers 2023|November 9, 2022, Recent discoveries about erroneous carbon credit calculations have fueled public doubt about the voluntary carbon marketplace (VCM), since understanding the carbon offset marketplace can be confusing. How healthy are India's 1.4 billion people? Recent years have seen massive tree-planting projects announced and rolled out. Suddenly we are all being told to plant trees. Any organization enrolled in a carbon offset program with genuine climate-friendly goals would try to prevent this. Remembering avant-garde artist Mary Bauermeister, Belgian court paves way for Iran prisoner swap treaty, Palestinians in occupied West Bank live with uncertainty, Thousands of migrants have died in South Texas, states most vulnerable to the changing climate. Will they be limited by nutrient availability or increased fire or increased drought? Similarly, planting trees in dry areas can cause water scarcity because they suck up so much as China has discovered. The criticism hit home and, in May 2020,Crowther's team published an extensive correction, in which they admitted that some of their headline claims were "incorrect" and that the data contained "errors". The lead author of that study, however, cautions against pitting all tree planting efforts against forest conservation. The government said that the project would cost a little over 125 billion rupees ($750 million, 633 million) but critics claim that other costs are being ignored. Last month, a global review of tree-planting initiatives in the tropics and subtropics since 1961 found that while dozens of organisations reported planting a total of 1.4 billion trees, just. Thats been kind of a red herring thats held out there a lot, says Law. Grasses are also less vulnerable to destruction by fire, drought, and disease. Those grazing animals can help prevent wildfires, Mahmood Nasir explained. This difference in value tells officials the number of carbon credits the buyer receives upfront. Barend 'Abraham' COZIJN. Others thought the paper dramatically overstated where new forests could grow by including savannahs and grasslands in its artificial intelligence-derived estimate of land suitable. Terrapass. The researchers investigated 102 million upfront IFM (improved forest management) credits, representing approximately two-thirds of Californias entire offset program. At its core, 8 Billion Trees carries out large-scale tree planting and tree conservation operations to fuel positive environmental change and defend habitats for animals, while also caring for displaced and hurt animals by utilizing wildlife sanctuaries and veterinary clinics focused in devastated and deforested areas. (n.d.). After the initial media blitz rallied excitement for the seemingly simple climate solution, a group of 46 scientists, including Fleischman, responded to the study with their critique. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. With the right support we can continue to do so for generations to come, reads a statement from indigenous and community organizations from 42 countries spanning 76 percent of the worlds tropical forest in response to a report from the IPCC. George Monbiot, a columnist in the UKs Guardian newspaper, has founded a campaign called Natural Climate Solutions, which advocates restoring forests and other ecosystems. Gujjars lost access to large grazing areas and were forced to sell their animals, abandon their traditional way of life, and seek low-paying jobs in distant cities. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. A study published in July 2019, led by Thomas Crowther of ETH-Zurich in Switzerland, estimated the world has room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares of forest. There are people at odds with science and believe that such conservation and restoration efforts are not necessary. The repeated assessment of soil carbon stocks is currently too time-consuming and expensive to use at the scale that would be required to verify stocks for carbon credits. Numerous organizations are facing newfound scrutiny, and the popular company Terrapass, has not been spared with many wondering, Is Terrapass legit?. This contrasts with the potential sale of empty credits. African ecologists noticed that the Crowther map, like the WRI map, showed high-profile conservation areas such as the Serengeti plains and the Kruger National Park as suitable for afforestation, as well as millions of acres of grasslands and savannas that have been used by herders for millennia. The hope is that they will save us from the worst effects of climate change. Some international bodies have also claimed that the project has created around 85,000 jobs. In 2014 Unger calculated that, by chopping down forests from 1850 to the 2000s and thus preventing them emitting volatiles, we have created a cooling effect that slightly offset the warming from greenhouse gas emissions. Hassan Abbas, an expert in environmental affairs, says that the plan to plant ten billion trees is being executed without any proper planning. The current focus on trees rather than grasses is partly a result of technological limitations: Its far easier and cheaper to measure above-ground carbon held in vegetation than carbon held below-ground in soil. In contrast, planting trees in snowy regions near the poles is likely to cause a net warming, while planting them in temperate climates like that of the UK, much of Europe and parts of the US may have no net effect on climate. Restor will show very clearly those that are failing. Planting billions of trees across the world is one of the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the. Restoring forests may be one of our most powerful weapons in fighting climate change. Several ecologists were outraged that forest restoration was framed as the most effective climate change solution to date, arguing that it was a dangerously misleading distraction from the urgency of cutting fossil fuel emissions. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. 8 Billion Trees is a Business that is Prioritizing the Cause of Actually Planting 8 Billion Trees Around The World, While Setting the Example of How a Cause Centric Business Can Succeed LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / February 14, 2019 /The founders of 8 Billion Trees are pleased to announce the launch of a new company that has one simple mission: to change the world, one tree at a time. Usman Ashraf, now a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, documented how Pakistans mega tree-planting drive destroyed the traditional livelihoods of the nomadic Gujjar people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. It claimed that planting a trillion trees could capture more than a third of all the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution. The other thing trees do is emit volatile chemicals into the air. Tree planting can distract from the greater priorities of protecting existing forests and reducing fossil fuel use, they say, and conserving and restoring natural open ecosystems, like grasslands, can often deliver more benefits than afforestation. We collect and match historical records that Ancestry users have contributed to their family trees to create each person's profile. During the 2019 election, Justin Trudeau promised Depending on soil types and climate, grasses often use less water to sequester soil carbon than trees do, and can do so faster and more effectively at higher temperatures. Experts believe planting trees can be good for nature but doing so without due consideration can have negative effects. Silencing Science: How Indonesia Is Censoring Wildlife Research, In Europes Clean Energy Transition, Industry Looks to Heat Pumps, Amazon Under Fire: The Long Struggle Against Brazils Land Barons. However, it does have some drawbacks. More about Adam Welz, Never miss a feature! Mahmood Nasir believes any plant that is grown outside its natural biome is expensive and environmentally disastrous. 1Terrapass. Scientists have begun their own public relations battle against numbers-driven, large-scale tree planting. For Law, it is one of the best estimates published to date. Billion Tree Tsunami Programme Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. But a growing number of scientists are warning that these massive projects can wreck natural ecosystems, dry up water supplies, damage agriculture, and push people off their land. Thomas Crowther: Everyone [in restoration] wants to do good. After five years, they could cut the trees for timber. We can find the places that are not doing well, or as well as expected, and learn from them, too.. Theres still a question mark, says Beerling. "Future papers in the series will build on the foundation of counting trees, extend the areas studied, and look ways to calculate their carbon content," said Tucker. The team mapped how tree crown diameter, coverage, and density varied depending on . If you plant trees there, youre losing livelihoods, youre losing future opportunities, and youre damaging natural biodiversity., Many planting proponents acknowledge that trees can have negative effects, but that putting the right trees in the right places can sequester carbon, rebuild forests, and enhance agricultural productivity. Ukraine updates: Russia says defense minister visits Donbas, Russian mercenary chief says Bakhmut almost fully encircled, Biden thanks Scholz for 'profound' German support on Ukraine. All sorts of technological approaches have been proposed, but trees are an obvious contributor. Retrieved July 17, 2021, from: https://www.Terrapass.com/standards-2, 7Terrapass. For Nadine Unger of the University of Exeter in the UK, this is a major problem. We are at that point of urgency with our planet.. His work includes an award-winning film about eccentric birders in New York City and exposs of environmental crime throughout southern Africa. Can we really solve the climate crisis by planting trees? Deforestation is actually one of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide, because when trees are cut down much of the carbon stored within them escapes into the air especially if the wood is burned. Terrapass is one of many US carbon offset companies that have been under increasing scrutiny in recent months. For instance, the climate will keep changing for many decades, and this will affect trees behaviour and growth but we dont really know how yet. The team estimated that the natural climate solutions could lock up the equivalent of 23.8 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. So long as a tree lives, that carbon stays within it and trees can live for decades or centuries. Will They Affect the Climate? His critique made the case that the amount of carbon the study said 1 trillion trees could sequester was about five times too large. The criticism has hit home. The carbon marketplace is one of the most powerful tools we have to mitigate climate change effects. However, other reforestation experts are critical of Ungers findings. Most of the land in Ashrafs research area is owned by members of the Pashtun ethnic group, who have rented winter pastures to Gujjar goat-herders for centuries. It is these projects that lack true results that are causing doubts on all the VCM as a whole, even though this can be a simple issue to avoid. Restoring these forests is crucial to preserving life as we know it. Restor will combine the latest biodiversity metrics with a global map of restoration projects. First and foremost, 8 Billion Trees is a social enterprise- not a charity. Did the government plant tens of thousands of trees in northern areas of the country? Others point to another solution with a more proven track record and that might be more deserving of global support empowering the people who live in and safeguard forests already. The paper generated over 700 media stories and further elevated the profile of the labs head, Thomas Crowther, a young British ecologist. This adds to the logistical costs which are coming out of the public coffers. "Administrative and other costs are not part of the allocated amount. Credit: bassvdo/Shutterstock. Everyone [in restoration] wants to do good. Probably the more important effect is those particles act as seeds for cloud droplets, says Spracklen. As soon as you get down onto the land, theres people living there and they have aspirations for how they want to live their lives that maybe dont involve tree-planting, says Spracklen. This causes a net increase in GHG emissions, but the company appears to have lowered their carbon output. Thats the pine-y smell you get when you walk through a forest, says Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds in the UK. However, it does have some drawbacks. She points out that the polar regions are warming faster than the rest of the planet, so much of the snow may melt in the coming decades in which case planting trees will not make the ground that much darker. The verification process isnt just for confirming a projects validity. The rich world, she says, is saying to poor countries, We can plant trees here, well give you money if you do plant trees here, but its up to you to decide whether its a good idea and whether its really going to fulfill your development needs.. If a place should naturally only have one tree per hectare, thats the level you should be restoring. It inspired the World Economic Forums (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, launched last year after Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff read the paper on the recommendation of Al Gore, the former US vice-president. The founder of the foundation that launched it, yogi and author Sadhguru, joined Salesforces Benioff at a press conference for the trillion trees campaign in Davos. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. 4,374 talking about this. By selling them upfront, California officials severely bloated their numbers. Volunteers plant trees on the edge of the Badain Jaran Desert on Chinas Tree-Planting Day on March 12, 2021 in Gansu Province. Therell be loads of plantations that corporates have set up. However, scientists say we must not place too much faith in trees to save us. So, what exactly is Terrapasss place in the carbon offset marketplace? Instead of that guy from Salesforce saying, Im going to put money into planting a trillion trees, Id like him to go and say, Im going to put my money into helping indigenous people in the Amazon defend their lands, Fleischman says. The UKs Royal Society came to similar conclusions in a 2018 report on greenhouse gas removal technologies. Microplastics Are Filling the Skies. Forest Atlas. In 2014, a province of Pakistan launched a Billion Tree Tsunami planting project, which was expanded into a nationwide 10-Billon Tree Tsunami project in 2018. Although a leading justification for tree planting is carbon sequestration, a growing number of ecologists say many projects will not create reliable carbon stores and may actually make global warming worse. It provides invaluable data that organizations can use to improve their practices, and see how a project can do better in its planting, reporting, and monitoring of operations. Droughts, wildfire, and insect and disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent, and forests are being replaced by grassy shrublands after these disturbances, mostly because its now too hot and dry for new generations of saplings to survive. And a Pakistani government investigation found that at least $3 million in Tree Tsunami funds were stolen, mostly by government officials and landowners involved in the program. Organizers of the Cauvery tree-planting project have said the criticism against it is a baseless opinion that contains blatant untruths and loose comments with no backing in facts. It says the trees will revive the river by increasing water retention. Because of this, the report has larger implications for the carbon marketplace at large. Launched in 2019, the project with. They still think forests play a role in solving the climate crisis their skepticism mostly centers around efforts to plant trees in places they werent before, or to plant large swaths of a single species to essentially create tree plantations instead of real forests. Thats going to have a bigger impact.. However, a closer look at the companys standards and practices clarifies that its one of the most trustworthy climate-focused orgs in the world. This means planting trees only helps stop climate change in certain places. Its not like these two things are in competition, says Wayne Walker, a scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center. Tree-planting started really trending in 2019, when a study published in the journal Science caused a commotion. So, they become known as empty credits. Youre going to max out pretty soon if you only try to use forests. However, there are also surprise benefits of planting trees. We messed up the communications so badly, Crowther says, clearly wounded by the backlash.