Can planting a million hectares of new forests actually address climate change ?
Erwin Amavassee
Tree planting has gained a lot of attention lately as governments and corporations throughout the world are setting ambitious initiatives of planting trees to offset their carbon emissions. For instance, in 2019, Ethiopia planted more than 350 million tree seedlings in just a day. They are now set to plant 20 billion seedlings by 2024!
As the UN Decade on Restoration (2021–2030) is launched on 5 June this year, as a global impetus to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems, we can expect the existing tree-planting craze to not only persist but also possibly accelerate around the globe. But can tree planting alone stop climate change and even protect vulnerable small islands like Mauritius?
Trees, forests and climate change
As we know, forests sequester carbon by capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transforming it into biomass, and this carbon remains trapped in individual trees as long as they remain alive and standing. However, human activities such as deforestation and illegal forest fires prevent trees and forests from performing that important ecosystem service that is carbon sequestration. Deforestation has become one of the biggest sources of excess carbon dioxide as stored carbon is released into the air when trees are cut down or burned. According to the Earth Day Network, more than 7 million hectares of forests are lost every year — which is roughly 38 times the size of an island like Mauritius.
So, if deforestation is such a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, isn’t tree planting really the top touting climate change solution?
The immediate and best answer to this question is simply no. First, while deforestation and land-use change contribute to greenhouse emissions, the fossil fuels industry remains the biggest contributor. Planting a million hectares of new forests will certainly help, but it is definitely not a cure-all solution on its own for the planet’s dual problems of climate change and pollution. Even trillions of trees would take years or centuries to actually grow, absorb and lock in carbon dioxide. Therefore, limiting global warming is almost certainly not going to happen by just promoting tree planting alone as a silver bullet to mitigate climate change.
The last generation to prevent global and irreversible damage
Climate change is irrevocably the greatest environmental challenge that we have ever faced and while time is running out, we can all do something about it.
“We are the last generation that can prevent irreparable damage to our planet,” warned the Former UN General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés in 2019. While it is possible to predict many of the problems from global changes, more importantly, we can recognise that the context of the challenges at hand demands a holistic, global and intergenerational approach to intensify effective actions that provide social and environmental benefits. Let’s take a quick look.
Investing in holistic approaches
The 2021 Earth Day theme which “focuses on natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems” provides hints about the multiplicity of tasks ahead. We must do all of it — better, faster and smarter. In order to curb the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities and keep global temperature increases below 1.5–2 °C, it is essential that governments, civil society organisations and private sectors take bold, creative and innovative actions that recognise that climate change is a cross-cutting problem, and that actions also need to match local needs and priorities.
But despite increasing awareness and investment in mitigation strategies, our emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise relentlessly. New and bigger commitments are important, particularly coming from richer nations and bigger emitters, but for many African countries and islands like Mauritius, climate change and its impacts are already upon us. So within the Mauritian context, a better approach for climate action is to focus on adapting now to the changes that are already here and that will continue to affect us for years to come.
Some key considerations for effective climate action within the Mauritian context:
Understanding and promoting climate justice: the impacts of climate change are not felt equitably among nations. Mauritius is a Small Island Developing State and despite contributing less to emissions, and having small carbon footprints compared to China and the United States, the island will probably suffer from the earliest and most harmful impacts of climate change from sea-level rise to extreme weather conditions. Likewise, climate change will have disproportionate effects upon local underprivileged or marginalised communities and groups. Therefore, it is significant to address such inequities when implementing long-term mitigation and adaptation strategies.
Supporting communities to be resilient: building community resilience involves understanding the factors that contribute to social vulnerability and addressing these accordingly with the participation of citizens.
Working towards sustainability: the COVID-19 pandemic showed how vulnerable economies are to disasters, which in turn, are also consequences of the destruction of nature. Tourism and agriculture in Mauritius does not only need to be more resilient but more importantly, it should not contribute to the causes of climate change and exacerbate impacts on communities.
Promoting gender equality and equity: women are one of the most vulnerable groups and are disproportionately affected by climate change and disasters. As such a gender lens need to be applied to climate change action and this starts with understanding and addressing gender issues within the Mauritian patriarchal society.
Restoring interactions and protecting endangered wildlife: climate action cannot be separated from biodiversity conservation. Biodiversity encompasses diversity in ecosystems, species and genetic resources. As we lose this diversity in nature, we also lose essential tools to be resilient. Mauritius, for example, still do not recognise the link between threatened wildlife like the Mauritian flying fox (that has been subjected to multiple mass culls) and their key ecological role in helping native forests regenerate. Also, together with the Mauritian flying fox, nearly all native species are on decline.
Implementing nature-based solutions at scale: an island like Mauritius cannot be resilient if the right measures and approaches are not put in place to protect existing natural ecosystems and to prevent further degradation and restore them. These also need to occur at the landscape level and using best practices.
Good governance and political will: it is crucial to have the right political will, which is unfortunately not some final item on the grocery list to be checked off once everything else is in the cart. Mauritius is committed to the Paris Agreement and several other policies of importance for climate action. Adaptation also remains the priority in Mauritius, yet we are not making significant progress. These policies and commitments are not just texts but they are there to protect people and the nature that supports their well-being.
So do we plant trees?
There are important factors to consider and issues to address as we try to build a more resilient Mauritius. It will require all hands on deck and an inter-sectoral approach. All actions do complement each other to address the climate change issues. And while nature remains the central element when it comes to climate action, it is also important to get these nature-based approaches right.
Let’s also plant trees but let’s distinguish between ‘tree planting’ and planting trees within an evidence-based ecosystem/landscape approach. Current pledges by some local organisations and initiatives to plant millions of trees by 2030 is not necessarily the right way forward. Many factors should be taken into consideration to ensure genuine and positive environmental and social impacts.
Several guidelines and standards have been developed that can help guide the design and implementation of evidence-based and impactful projects but there are also opportunities and a need to leverage local knowledge, experiences and expertise in Mauritius.
[This article was written by Erwin Amavassee and edited by Fabiola Monty and Claudia Baider]
Erwin Amavassee is a conservation biologist and a restoration coordinator with the NGO Friends of the Environment. He is one of the 2021 recipient of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for African leaders. As a member of Nature Yetu, he has now taken a role as a partnership and youth engagement advisor. You can follow him here.
