The European Union has announced the launch of its new Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 by which it commits to curbing the loss of biodiversity and conserving and restoring its ecosystems.
This ambitious and necessary strategy proposes several measures, including:
– Establish protected areas.
– Increase organic farming and landscape features rich in biodiversity on farmland.
– Reverse the decline in pollinators.
– Reduce the use and risk of pesticides.
– Restore the free flow of water in rivers or sections of rivers.
– Plant 3 billion trees.
This announcement has been particularly well received by the public in a context where COVID-19 has highlighted the relationship between human health and ecosystem health.
Forests and climate change
This ambitious goal of planting billions of trees has precedents such as the global forest recovery goals pursued by the Bonn Challenge and the One Trillion Trees Campaign, among other initiatives.
As environmental activist Greta Thunberg has emphasized in her campaign, trees are perfect machines that nature has invented to sequester CO₂ from the atmosphere, produce oxygen and pump water. They are also the main elements that make up forests, the most biodiverse habitats on the planet.
It is not surprising, then, that tree planting is perceived by the public and political authorities as an effective tool in the fight against climate change, soil erosion and desertification, water scarcity and the sixth extinction of species.
However, restoring forests (ecosystems with particular characteristics of species composition, function and ecological integrity) is not the same as planting trees, although planting trees is a technique commonly used to restore forests.
Nature regenerates itself
The best way to restore forests is through their natural regeneration, that is, without human intervention beyond the interruption of the causes that have destroyed or degraded them , leaving nature to act on its own.
Passive forest restoration is genuine, free except for opportunity costs, and furthermore, scientific evidence has shown that it often provides better or similar results in restoring biodiversity and forest functions.
Natural regeneration should be the first option for forest restoration unless the forest cannot regenerate itself or specific objectives are pursued , be they ecological (e.g. regulating erosion) or socio-economic (e.g. creating job posts). job).
A planned plantation
Tree planting is not a simple solution and must be carefully designed, executed, monitored and, if appropriate, corrected to achieve the desired results.
The vast majority of forest plantations have well-intentioned purposes, but they can be environmentally perverse regardless of other social and economic connotations. For example, they can destroy or degrade valuable natural or semi-natural ecosystems such as grasslands and shrubs with low and sparse vegetation, or agricultural areas of high natural value.
Trees should not be planted anywhere or anytime, in any way and of any species. For these types of solutions to be adequate, as well as effective, they must meet a series of requirements:
- Use native species, except for specific and justified exceptions.
- Evaluate the environmental impact that tree planting will have on the ecosystem as a whole. There is a balance between the goods and services they provide, in such a way that the increase of some is to the detriment of others. Maximizing the carbon sequestration service can easily be achieved by planting fast-growing exotic species, but it would be to the detriment of soil and stream water and local native biodiversity.
- Consider the socioeconomic impact, particularly on local economies.
- Ensure convenient monitoring and management, adaptive to the conditions and evolution of the ecosystem, to achieve the proposed objectives.
Intensive forest plantations
According to the latest FAO Forest Resources Assessment, Europe is the region in the world with the lowest proportion of intensive forest plantations compared to natural forests, representing 0.4% of the total forest area. An additional 5.5% of this forest area corresponds to non-intensively managed planted forests that more closely resemble natural forests.
The situation should be maintained, in such a way that future plantations in the Old Continent are mainly aimed at restoring biodiversity. It would be a mistake to fill Europe with trees under the guise of sequestering carbon, when the real intention might be to produce pulp to package the products sold through the growing electronic commerce of home delivery, among other purposes.
Fortunately, the future Forest Plan of the Strategy foresees an evaluation of the results in 2023 with the aim of correcting possible errors.
José M. Rey Benayas, Professor of Ecology, University of Alcalá
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
