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There is no doubt that planting more trees helps in the fight against climate change—but it’s not as simple as planting a seed in the ground. To understand how to best direct efforts to grow trees across the world, I spoke to Paul Smith, secretary general at Botanic Gardens Conservation International. In November, the organization launched a Global Biodiversity Standard to encourage a move away from initiatives that “plant a tree at any price” and instead promote a long-term solution that puts the right tree in the right place and combines the considerations of biodiversity, local communities, and carbon capture.
What are some of the common issues that lead to the failure of tree planting projects?
First, is not choosing the right tree species—those that are not right for the climate or the soil. But the biggest problem actually is the lack of proper care. People think if you stick a tree in the ground, it will look after itself. [But] it needs management and care, monitoring, and so on. And this is also a concern of ours, that people would be wasting money if they think they can just drop the seed and hope for the best. There's a lot of care required.
How can companies ensure they find the best partners in tree planting projects?
Work with your local botanical garden. There are around 3000 of those around the world. There's tremendous expertise available in every country. For any investment you're making, you [want to] work with the best of the best advisors. And I think quite often that isn't happening.
It's not just about providing direct advice or information about what goes in the ground. An additional major constraint is lack of infrastructure and lack of material. Take Ethiopia, which has pledged to plant millions of hectares of forest—they have about 800 tree species that are native to [the country] and we know will grow well there. But only about 35 of those 800 are available in nurseries and in seed banks. So there's a major piece of work that needs to happen to build the infrastructure for us to plant a more diverse range of trees.
Is that an area where corporate ESG initiatives can help?
It's all market driven. If corporates want a more diverse range of species to plant, the infrastructure will come. There's a role for our community in supporting [those efforts]. For example, we have information about how to germinate a wide range of tree species that's publicly available, but people don't know that it's available. We need to see a bit of a paradigm shift from using just a few fast growing exotic species to something which is much more resilient, biodiversity friendly, and better actually at storing carbon.
Some people seem to think we can solve climate change simply by planting trees rather than reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases or reliance on fossil fuels. What’s your view on that?
It's very clear that tree planting cannot be seen as a substitute for changing the way that we rely on fossil fuels and shifting to more sustainable energy. Tree planting is useful, if it's done right. It sequesters carbon and also, there are benefits for people and benefits for biodiversity. Equally, it can be damaging. If you're planting trees in highly biodiverse grasslands, for example, that's going to be damaging for biodiversity and ultimately for people. But done right, it is a really important intervention that can provide all kinds of benefits.
We’ve talked about planting trees, but what considerations should go into whether it’s worth cutting trees to make space for manufacturing plants or other development projects?
It does depend on what kind of forest it is. Was that forest planted by people? Is it highly biodiverse? [And if you’re planting trees to replace those you’ve cut down,] are you replacing like for like? If you're replacing like for like, then that is sustainable. When it comes to the tropics, where we have absolutely no experience of putting in a really diverse tropical system, then I think that's problematic. We're seeing all of these really high value hardwoods being cut out and no replacement—that is simply unsustainable and it's damaging.
Unless biodiversity is monetized in some form, and that could be through governments or the corporates who want to do something for biodiversity, I don't think we're going to win this battle. I think that we're going to continually be replanting exotics that do nothing for biodiversity, but can be damaging to water availability and erosion, etcetera. So that's perhaps a bigger issue, how we start to value biodiversity.
Paul Smith’s answers were condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.
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