Tree Planting: A Solution to Climate Change?

Nature – especially trees and forests – is an essential tool in the fight against climate change. Trees are the best technology we have for reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.¹ Tree planting is vital for preventing global warming, as additional trees soak up more harmful greenhouse gas.²

Nevertheless, tree planting alone cannot solve climate change.³ To effectively combat global warming, we must simultaneously restore our extant forests and massively reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

What is tree planting?

As its name implies, tree planting involves planting new trees. This may be to restore existing forests or afforest a new area where trees have not previously grown.⁴

Many countries have embraced tree planting for its many environmental benefits, including boosting biodiversity, preventing flooding and soil erosion, and soaking up carbon.⁵ For example, 800,000 volunteers in India planted nearly 50 million trees in one day in 2016.⁶ The UK government has set a target to plant trees over 30,000 hectares of new woodland in England by 2025⁷, and they are planting one million trees overall as part of their efforts to reach net-zero emissions.⁸ Trees planted by Forestry England exceed one billion over the past century, according to their website.⁹

Meanwhile, China aimed to plant 35 million hectares of new trees to create a forest the size of Germany, starting the endeavour in 1978. The theory was that it would protect northern China from the encroaching Gobi Desert. However, in pursuit of quick results, a monoculture of fast-growing poplars was planted instead of a natural mixture of species. As such, a huge number of trees started dying, beset by Asia’s longhorn beetle. This has led to millions of infected trees being cut down.¹⁰

It serves as an important lesson that the right trees must be planted in the right places. Trees must also be planted at the right time, such as early Spring. Otherwise, tree planting can cause more harm than good.

What causes climate change?

Humans are causing climate change by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.¹¹ These gases play a similar role to glass in a greenhouse, by trapping the sun’s heat and stopping it from leaking back into space.¹² These emissions are raising the planet’s overall temperature by 0.2°C every decade.¹³ Burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and farming livestock release greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide.¹⁴

Carbon dioxide is the most important emission contributing to global warming.¹⁵ Carbon is naturally found in the atmosphere, oceans, rock formations, vegetation and living organisms.¹⁶ The element continually transfers between these different reservoirs in a process known as the carbon cycle.¹⁷

Processes, such as burning fossil fuels, release carbon from one reservoir – the fossilised remains of living organisms – and adds it to another, the Earth’s atmosphere. By burning fossil fuels, humans have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 47 per cent since the Industrial Revolution.¹⁸ It is now at its highest level for at least 800,000 years.¹⁹ A transition to clean renewable energy sources is therefore imperative for avoiding a catastrophic global increase in temperature.

What is the effect of tree planting on climate change?

Trees form another part of the carbon cycle, absorbing CO2 from the air, storing the carbon in their biomass and emitting pure oxygen.²⁰ They help offset global warming by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering it in their wood or surrounding soil.²¹ An average mature tree captures about 21 kilograms of CO2 per year.²² One tree will absorb a tonne of carbon over a 100-year lifetime.²³ Planting more trees would remove more CO2 and store it until the tree is burned or decomposes.²⁴ This would alleviate the greenhouse effect and reduce the effects of climate change.

However, deforestation must also be curtailed if tree planting is to mitigate global warming. Cutting down trees and burning the wood or leaving it to rot releases the carbon they have stored.²⁵ Deforestation currently accounts for at least 10 per cent of all anthropogenic emissions each year.²⁶

The practice is particularly rampant in the tropics.²⁷ Since the 1960s, over half of the world’s rainforests have been razed.²⁸ Another hectare is destroyed or severely degraded every second.²⁹ Every year, we lose an area of forest the size of the UK.³⁰ This is despite conservation efforts aware of the environmental benefits forests offer. If we protect and manage our existing natural world carefully, it can provide at least a quarter of the climate mitigation needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.³¹

Deforestation also has disastrous consequences for the world’s biodiversity. 80 per cent of all terrestrial species live in forests.³² Removing habitats by clearing trees contributes to anywhere between 200 and 100,000 species going extinct every year.³³ This biological holocaust is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.³⁴

Is tree planting a solution to climate change?

Planting trees by itself is not a solution to climate change. We must reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels to resolve the problem.³⁵ We also need to protect and enhance the trees we already have, as they represent huge carbon sinks – storing carbon and preventing it from entering the atmosphere.³⁶

However, to plant a tree is an undeniably cheap and efficient way to remove CO2 from the air and store it for centuries.³⁷ We need trees to both mitigate future emissions and those we have already caused. They are also home to a vast array of animals and plants, and 1.6 billion people depend on them for their livelihoods.³⁸ Trees are essential for life on Earth, and we must nurture the forests we already have whilst cultivating more for posterity.

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