The social and environmental costs of large-scale tree planting to help deal with global warming far outweigh the likely benefits, according to a Friends of the Earth report published on March 1.
The report, Deserts of Trees, reveals that reforestation on a large scale would reduce biodiversity through damage to wildlife habitats, degrade soils and lead to the forced resettlement of subsistence farmers.
Friends of the Earth International is pressing delegates at the Earth Summit preparatory committee (PrepCom), which started in New York on March 2, to deal with climate change without relying on tree-planting.
The New York meeting is the fourth, final and most important negotiating session leading up to June's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro — the climax of the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED).
The report questions whether there is enough land on which to grow new forests, given the scale of the global warming threat. It has been estimated that 1 billion hectares, or an area the size of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, would need to be reforested annually to take up all the carbon dioxide being released to the atmosphere from all human-induced sources.
Tony Juniper, Friends of the Earth's tropical rainforest campaigner, said: "Whilst tree planting is vital in solving many environmental problems, politicians are using it as a green smokescreen to hide the failure of developed countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide.
"Planting trees could divert attention from the urgent need to stop natural forests being destroyed."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that over the last 200 years, deforestation has contributed about half the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Research conducted for Friends of the Earth suggested that in 1989, some 20% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions came from the destruction of tropical rainforests.
As they grow, forests soak up carbon dioxide, but release this climate-changing gas when they are cut down. This is a further reason for preventing more losses of natural forests: plantations hold much less carbon.
Official documents for the New York PrepCom point to a deadlock-breaking compromise over the "wise use" of forests through agreement on tree planting targets. The rich countries may offer money for plantation forestry in developing nations and then offset the carbon content in the new trees against their massive carbon dioxide emissions. Although such arrangements may break the impasse, they would do virtually nothing to deal with many of the main threats to the global environment.
[Friends of the Earth/Pegasus.]