20 20 vision for 2020 – is even 20% tree cover enough?
by Angus, 6 January, 2020, 2 comments
Campaigners say that we need to increase tree cover to 50% and claim it will help deal with climate change. Tree planting became a big issue in the recent general election but it's much harder than people think and probably less effective at combatting climate change than other simpler measures. For a start it's a slow business - even in the 1960s tree-planting splurge it took a decade of feverish activity to increase tree cover by just a few percentage points. Also you need to think carefully about where you plant and what trees you plant - the 1960's planting was mostly on uplands and with mono-cultures that were bad for biodiversity (mainly spruce and pine). More fundamentally we need to ask what this tree-planting is trying to achieve: can the carbon fixed through one crop of trees realistically counter the burning of carbon from millions of generations of trees represented by burning coal and oil? Read more...
