Alicky Davey, Fauna & Flora’s Plant Conservation Programme Manager, reflects on the benefits and pitfalls of tree-planting as a means of addressing the biodiversity and climate crises.
The destruction and fragmentation of the world’s forests pose an existential threat to our planet. They exacerbate biodiversity loss, global heating and the destabilisation of crucial ecosystem services – including food production, climate regulation and water supply.
In response to this crisis, we have seen a global surge in tree-planting and other restoration initiatives. Governments have made eye-watering commitments to planting trees as a means of progressing towards their targets under the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 350 million hectares of degraded forest by 2030. In August 2019, Ethiopia reportedly broke the world record by planting more than 350 million trees in a single day and pledged to plant 20 billion over the following four years.
The 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos launched a new global commitment to grow, restore and conserve one trillion trees within the same time frame. The citizen-led aspect of this approach was powerful, with people able to support tree planting simply by changing their web browser and social media influencers pledging to plant trees for every new follower they gained.
As we stand at the halfway point of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), the tree-planting movement shows no signs of losing momentum. Current restoration pledges under the Bonn Challenge amount to 210 million hectares globally. That’s an area the size of France, Spain and Germany combined.
