Wood: Humans Trying to Fix Their Mistakes

What can be done to combat deforestation and loss of forests? Two ways are reforestation and afforestation. The United Nations defines reforestation as the planting of trees or forest cover on land that previously held trees, while afforestation is defined as the planting of trees on land with no previous forest coverage. One major program that supports these efforts is the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD). It was launched in 2008 and works with the FAO, UNEP, and UNDP to help countries meet the UNFCCC's REDD+ requirements. Baselines for these requirements are determined with the assistance of Landsat data, which helps determine deforestation rates and track global forest cover losses and gains. REDD+ projects aim to connect stakeholders from around the world with developing communities to help decrease deforestation and to encourage conservation. It is considered an extremely cost-effective strategy in mitigating climate change (Song et al. 2015). Incentives are offered for assistance and some assistance fulfills UNFCCC climate pledges.

However, REDD+ is not perfect. Lund et al. argue REDD+ is a conservation fad and claim its primary accomplishments are the development of policy and pilot projects. When looking at the development of REDD+ in Tanzania, for example, they labeled it not successful based on a lack of sufficient financial and human resources. REDD+ in Tanzania was unable to solve key issues, such as drivers of deforestation or rule enforcement and the availability of millions of United States Dollars was deemed to be insufficient. REDD+ needs to be further developed in order to increase its success rates (Lund et al. 2016).

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Forests are large carbon sinks and trees are a natural climate solution. The video below by environmental activists Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot does a great job of highlighting the climate crisis and the essential role trees play. Their main message is to protect, restore, and fund. In addition to trees being essential for providing oxygen for humans to survive, trees also provide shelter and shade, food, nuts, and medicines, decrease energy bills, and provide habitats for various species. Natural climate solutions such as growing trees, unfortunately only receive 2% of the total money used to combat climate breakdown.

Trees are a natural climate solution. We should protect, restore, and fund.

Although not directly related to the mitigation of deforestation, I came across an interesting article that discusses grasslands as carbon sinks. Dass et al. argues that grasslands may be more resilient than forests in California due to its harsh droughts and wildfires. Grasslands are not typically the first thing, nor the second thing, that comes to mind when considering carbon sinks. Although not a mitigation strategy for deforestation, it is something that might work to minimize the adverse consequences of climate change and increasing temperatures.