The race to net zero is underway around the world as climate action calls intensify with time running out. With deadlines from as soon as 2030 for Barbados and The Maldives set out in policy, law set out for Germany, Sweden, and Portugal to hit by 2045, to a longer-term pledge of by 2070 for India, no matter the country, plans include a lot of offsetting. And when it comes to offsetting, there’s a lot of reliance on trees.
And for good reason – trees can absorb around 21kg of carbon dioxide every year, meaning that one acre in a forest can absorb double the amount of CO2 produced by a car on average in a year.
So, planting trees is the answer to our climate crisis? Not exactly.
This level of carbon absorption can only reliably happen if and when a tree is grown and established, so we don’t see significant benefit of it for around a decade. We know that climate change has to be limited and we need to see urgent action happening, so a 10-year turnaround timeline isn’t necessarily the most helpful when time is of the essence.
In that case, what can be done in the shorter term which will help now?
One answer still lies with trees, but instead of planting new, it’s a case of focusing on what we’ve already got, and doing everything we can to protect them.
Why Protecting Existing Trees is Important
Protecting existing trees is important because they are already doing a great job of storing carbon. As long as a tree lives the carbon will stay within it, and as they absorb even more carbon each year, protecting existing trees is a much better use of time, effort, and resource compared to planting new when it comes to taking climate action which is having an immediate impact.
And not only that, but deforestation is one of the largest causes of carbon emissions as cutting trees down causes the carbon they had stored to be released back into the atmosphere, and the wood is often burned. And if that wasn’t enough, quite often the cause of deforestation is due to needing to make more room for farming which is a cause of yet more carbon.
It’s fair to say the importance of protecting forests around the globe cannot be overstated – it’s by no means going to answer all of the carbon conundrums, but it’s a constructive start and certainly will benefit us. The benefits are going to be experienced so much sooner and is far more tangible than purchasing an offset in the shape of a sapling which carries a vague promise around the carbon it may eventually store.
The Root Of it
Fundamentally, tree planting doesn’t address the root of what’s going on: carbon emitting activities. Offsetting your carbon footprint doesn’t encourage or inspire any change in behaviour, if anything, it just acts as an excuse for the bad behaviour.
Planting a few trees won’t stop the amount of carbon you’ve emitted, and you’re still adding to total global emissions. Sure, in a decade or so, the trees planted as a result of your offset purchase may absorb an equivalent amount of the carbon you emitted in the one activity you offset, but it doesn’t make up for, or change, your actions as and when they happen.
That’s not to say that there’s no benefit in the vast number of trees that have been planted over recent years, as they will contribute to taking some of the carbon in the atmosphere, out of the atmosphere, in years to come, but global warming is happening now and therefore, we need to be acting in a way that we’ll feel the benefit now.
We know the way to limit the impact of global warming is to reduce, or ideally stop, emitting greenhouse gasses, and we can all play our part in this. Walking short journeys instead of taking the car, minimising air-travel, choosing renewable energy suppliers and only heating rooms if needed, using low-energy lighting solutions – really, it’s all in our hands.
We all saw that when the world stopped during the coronavirus pandemic, nature responded. Air pollution levels in known smog and emission hotspots such as Delhi, Beijing, and Sao Paolo, dropped to the lowest they’ve been in decades.
The Air Quality Index has been a hugely insightful indicator into how city air levels responded to imposed stay at home rules. For example, in Delhi, where the air quality index is around 200 on a good day and peaked well above 900 in high pollution periods in 2019 and bearing in mind that WHO judge anything above a rating of 25 in air quality index as unsafe, saw levels regularly fall to below 20 – and in a short space of time, too. With a lockdown introduced on March 24th in Delhi, by April 8th this was the scene pre pandemic and during the lockdown:
We need to change our behaviour, and quickly, for the good and future of our planet. But removing all carbon emitting activity doesn’t go far enough anymore as we’re too far down the climate change path, and we certainly can’t afford to add more carbon to the atmosphere. We need to look after what we’ve got, protecting our forests and all that lives and thrives within them, take our responsibility more seriously, and then we may stand a chance in limiting global warming to 1.5°C.