These are difficult times in the fight against climate change, and to top it all, a new study makes one of the most well-intentioned initiatives down: tree planting. The idea is that these absorb the excess CO2 emitted by the use of fossil fuels, but a group of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, suggests that it does not do much in the current emissions scenario. Moreover, they say, if all the trees and other plants necessary to compensate for the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were planted, most of the planet’s natural ecosystems and cultivated areas would disappear .
This is how Lena Boysen, lead author of the work, published in Earth’s Future magazine, explains: “Even if we are able to use productive plants such as poplars or certain grasses and store 50% of the carbon contained in their biomass , the environmental damage they would cause would be enormous. ”. Their calculations estimate that, even if the goals of the Paris Agreement are met by the middle of the 21st century, these biomass plantations would wipe out a third of today’s forests and a quarter of agricultural land , according to their computer models.
Experts indicate that a more aggressive policy of containing emissions and the implementation of CO2 capture technologies would be necessary so that by the year 2100 the global temperature does not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius and natural ecosystems are not displaced by crops that effectively store carbon dioxide.
The message is clear: biomass plantations are only one complementary measure to other policies –urgent and ambitious– to reduce and capture greenhouse gas emissions.
