An economic and clean solution against the environmental crisis: planting trees

The tree nursery could help to improve not only the quality of the air thanks to the incessant production of oxygen during the day, but also to the purification of this. 

New research estimates that a world planting program could remove two-thirds of all emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere from human activities. (The analysis excluded cultivated fields and urban areas, but considered grazing lands instead, as trees could benefit farms) 

The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined. Tropical areas could have 100% tree cover. 

Tom Crowther, from the Swiss university ETH Zürich and leader of the research said: «This new quantitative evaluation shows – forest - restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one. What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed». 

The researcher also highlighted how this solution is immediate, economic, without involving renunciations or radical changes of opinion. 

Other scientists agree that carbon will need to be removed from the atmosphere to avoid catastrophic climate impacts and have warned that technological solutions will not work on the vast scale needed. 

The study, published in the journal Science, determines the potential for tree planting but does not address how a global tree planting programme would be paid for and delivered. 

Crowther said: «the most effective projects are doing restoration for 30 US cents a tree. That means we could restore the 1tn trees for $300bn [£240bn], though obviously that means immense efficiency and effectiveness. But it is by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed». 

Tree planting initiatives already exist, including the Bonn Challenge, backed by 48 nations, aimed at restoring 350m hectares of forest by 2030. 

Earlier research by Crowther’s team calculated that there are currently about 3tn trees in the world, which is about half the number that existed before the rise of human civilisation. «We still have a net loss of about 10bn trees a year».