Afforestation
Land Use
Afforestation — creating forests where there were none before — creates a carbon sink, drawing in and holding on to carbon and distributing it into the soil.
Rank and results by 2050 #15
Afforestation
| Reduced CO2: | 18 gigatons |
|---|---|
| Net cost (Billions US$): | $29.44 |
| Net operational savings: | $392.33 billion |
TOTAL CO2-EQ REDUCTION (GT)
Total CO2-equivalent reduction in atmospheric greenhouse gases by 2050 (gigatons)
NET COST (billions US $)
Net cost to implement
SAVINGS (billions US $)
Net savings by 2050
Impact:
As of 2014, 709 million acres of land were used for afforestation. Establishing timber plantations on an additional 204 million acres of marginal lands can sequester 18.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050. The use of marginal lands for afforestation also indirectly avoids deforestation that otherwise would be done in the conventional system. At a cost of $29 billion to implement, this additional area of timber plantations could produce a net profit for landowners of over $392 billion by 2050.
Afforestation
Land Use
Afforestation — creating forests where there were none before — creates a carbon sink, drawing in and holding on to carbon and distributing it into the soil.
Creating new forests where there were none before is the aim of afforestation. Degraded pasture and agricultural lands, or other lands corrupted from uses such as mining, are ripe for strategic planting of trees and perennial biomass.
Afforestation can take a variety of forms—from seeding dense plots of diverse indigenous species to introducing a single exotic as a plantation crop, such as the fast-growing Monterey pine, the most widely planted tree in the world. Whatever the structure, afforestation creates a carbon sink, drawing in and holding on to carbon and distributing it into the soil.
Plantations comprise the majority of afforestation projects and are on the rise globally, planting trees for timber and fiber and, increasingly, carbon offsets. Plantations are controversial because they are often created with purely economic motives and little regard for the long-term well-being of the land, environment, or surrounding communities.
To counter the ecological deserts of monoculture tree farms, Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki devised a completely different method of afforestation. His fast-growing, dense plots of native species show that afforestation can draw down carbon, while supporting biodiversity, addressing human needs for firewood, food, and medicine, and providing ecosystem services such as flood and drought protection.
