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Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

257 points by kaboro 4y ago

superchroma 4y ago
"There is no anti-tree lobby" There absolutely is. In my country, logging companies release statements complaining bitterly about effects to industry when new areas of land are protected from logging by the government. They equally are quite happy to quietly log ancient trees when allowed. Just because people don't march around with their agenda printed on a badge doesn't mean they don't exist.
- ianbicking 4y ago
  If you add the slight qualifier "there is no anti-tree-planting lobby" then it works... those logging companies will also enthusiastically support planting trees
  - rolandog 4y ago
    The same way that wolves are pro-birthers when it comes to sheep.
    - RobLach 4y ago
      Yes but planting trees and turning it to lumber is an excellent way to sequester carbon.
      - rolandog 4y ago
        Oh, agreed. I just wanted to make an analogy about groups that have, in theory, competing interests but can in some cases have common goals.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        Trees are not 100% carbon. Logging worsens soil conditions when no effort is made to preserve it. "Just keep planting lol" is not sustainable. Algae sequester carbon better.
        jandrese 4y ago
        What logging does is create an economic incentive to plant the trees and let them grow. The problem with algae is that it doesn't have economic value currently. People dream about turning it into food or biofuels but that's not currently viable. Although if you were only interested in sequestering carbon (which currently has close to 0 economic incentive) you could grow algae, filter them out of the water, and then pump them deep underground into old gas/oil wells. It's still a lot of energy but possibly more viable than most carbon capture proposals. Over millions of years that algae will probably turn back into coal/oil. Also, farming algae in natural waterways tends to have its own environmental impacts.
  - soperj 4y ago
    There's no lobby, but you count me as part of an anti-tree-planting group. There's a specific reason why, and it's because of how it's done. The reason that they plant trees, is to grow specific kinds of trees that are good for logging companies. So they spray areas that are logged with glycosphate to prevent other plants from reclaiming the logged areas, and then plant round-up ready GMO trees in the area. It leads to these massive mono-culture forests that are prime for huge forest fires. The trees they want are fire-promoting trees (like pines), and the trees they don't (like aspen) are fire break species. They then blame the bigger forest fires entirely on climate change.
    - xani__ 4y ago
  - ajross 4y ago
    Only timber species, though, not forests.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Harvesting and replanting trees is not anti-tree.
- RunSet 4y ago
  > Needless to say, the logging industry was not happy about The Lorax. The book was banned from many schools and libraries near thriving timber communities. Timber industry groups even sponsored a rebuttal book, called The Truax, which helped kids understand the necessity of harvesting timber. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/the-environmental-message-behind-the-lorax/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/the-environmental-messa...
mistrial9 4y ago
a quick read of this -- it appears to be a list of badly executed projects by struggling governments, more than anything ecosystem-oriented; coinciding with "constant topic of conversation in political circles" .. Second in failure rate only to "protecting healthy forests that exist now" ?
- orangepurple 4y ago
  From a distance it appears as if those organizations are doing those tree planting stunts to tick boxes on ESG compliance forms required to receive international aid they need for embezzlement income. How else do useless third world bureaucrats fund their escapades? Look no further than the recent history of Nauru to see how leadership has zero qualms stealing the future of a whole country then converting it into a literal prison for hire for $27 million a year.
debacle 4y ago
Trees tend to fail spectacularly, even for seasoned growers. The site that I bulk purchase seedlings from estimates a failure rate as high as 70% for evergreen plugs if you do everything right. As you move up from seedlings to 3 year old plants, the failure rate drops to 10%, but my real failure rate is probably closer to 30%. The number one reason is too much/too little moisture, with some pests/disease thrown in. Furthermore, trees need organic material. A lot of it. A tree planted in "dirt" will be about the same size 3 years later. A (young) tree planted in rich compost can double in size in a year. You can't stick a tree in the ground anywhere and expect it to grow without a good amount of help.
- smesla 4y ago
  What sort of evergreens are you planting? Are they native? I replanted a clearcut a year or so ago and even with an abnormally hot summer and a dry fall I'm looking at 30%, tops.
  - debacle 4y ago
    A variety. I'm working to restore a large tract of former farmland, and so we're trying to plant whatever sticks to increase biodiversity.
    - smesla 4y ago
      If you haven't yet, you may want to hire a professional forester. At 70% loss they'd likely pay for themselves many times over and save a lot of headache.
      - debacle 4y ago
        These are seedling trees, less than a foot high. They're expected to fail at a pretty high rate. In the future I'll be updating to 2nd year trees which seem to have a better cost/survival rate.
- clairity 4y ago
  yes, LA has a program to give away trees for planting in yards and parkways, and my read of the program is that, while it's goal is laudable, the implementation is lacking. earlier this year, a partner non-profit planted 2 trees for us and i planted an additional 2 trees that another org gave us, and i learned that it's not a set-it-and-forget-it type of endeavor. walking around my neighborhood, many of these trees, even though most are native species adapted to the environment, will end up dying because of the lack of care and the lack of education that comes with the trees. beyond enriching the soil when planting, it apparently takes ~5 years for the trees to establish themselves, and so requires constant watering for at least that amount of time. ours sprouted quickly when first planted but then stagnated through the hottest parts of the summer. now we're entering the winter season and i'm wondering what we need to do to revitalize the soil again to help them grow in the spring.
rdtwo 4y ago
Planting the wrong trees can be an ecological disaster and a lot of trees planted are the wrong tree for the environment
biellls 4y ago
Monocultures of any kind are always fragile, you need diversity to have a resilient ecosystem. These projects should benefit from an understanding of permaculture, which is a discipline that aims to create the right conditions for healthy systems. Everything from succession (pioneer leguminous species that can fix nitrogen and improve soil, slowly replaced by other species), trying to slow down and catch water where it falls to prevent soil erosion and runoff and much more. I've heard (unsubstantiated) claims that initiatives in China have already started to take these into account and have succeeded where other monoculture forests failed. A side effect is that you can end up with productive species. Imagine forests where many trees bear fruits, others have acorns that pigs can feed on, fruit vines and understory herbs that animals can graze on, large lakes with edible fish. This is the future I'd be excited for and it's all currently possible with the right policies.
- Retric 4y ago
  Monoculture of very fast growing trees let’s them maximize the value per acre when sold as carbon indulgences. Actual impact is much lower, but by then they have moved to the next project. That said, in areas that got deforested having any tree cover can make the area much more habitable for other trees. Thus single digit survival rates can still result in new forest over a few decades.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    The economic topic you're hinting at is externality. There is also the notion of Goodhart's Law, where any (single dimensional) measure gets gamed.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- jandrese 4y ago
  Would it really be so hard to plant a mix of seeds? I can see a monoculture if the intention is to harvest the wood or fruit later, but if you're only planting to capture carbon or restore a forest then a mix of trees seems like a healthier option and shouldn't be any more effort. You don't need to be precise with the mix either, a just random chance should be fine.
ianbicking 4y ago
The Miyawaki method [1], which I'm sure has been on HN before, is a very different approach to these projects. When I first read about it, it seemed like a kind of too-good-to-be-true miracle approach, but reading further it's really just a lot of hard work. Site preparation is a huge part of it. This photo gallery [2] gives some sense. It starts with soil testing and soil amendment, I doubt they ever consider the soil "good enough" at the outset. I'm not sure if they also do any hydrological changes? Then they plant a dense and diverse set of trees. I'm not clear how many trees ultimately survive. There's theories about the set of trees you'd use, but I can only imagine some of the process is just natural selection, and a belief that early density is positive to later growth. Bringing it back to technology, I do wonder what tools could support this kind of higher-effort higher-impact forestation. It seems like there's work to be done performing soil tests and understand the results and recommended amendments, including some decision trees around tests and results. There's general guidance on the choice of trees, but it requires matching that guidance against local conditions and local plants. In some ways the process is simpler than landscaping a house: you aren't trying to get a perfect set of plants, and you aren't imposing other requirements. You're really trying to build a mini ecosystem, and the ecosystem is there to do a lot of the work on its own. I am less sure how this approach translates to more marginal locations. It's a bit easier to rapidly create a lush and vibrant forest in India than at the edge of a desert. Most of the examples are in tropical locations. [1] https://www.crowdforesting.org/miyawaki-model/forest-kerala https://www.crowdforesting.org/miyawaki-model/forest-kerala [2] https://www.greenyatra.org/miyawaki.php https://www.greenyatra.org/miyawaki.php
- sn41 4y ago
  Hmm. Pleasantly surprised to find Kerala being mentioned in this context - I wasn't aware of this. But on a related note, the south west of India has a rich tradition of "Sarpa Kavus", literally, "Serpent Shrine", but which are in reality, sacred groves in some corner of the yard of many traditional homes (see [1] for a typical example) - these are mostly left to themselves for most of the year, except for a couple of festival days. In practice, it is almost a biome within the yard. [1] https://nandakishorevarma.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/a-sacred-grove-for-serpents/ https://nandakishorevarma.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/a-sacred-...
- 4y ago
greenie_beans 4y ago
and what about grasslands? these projects will sometimes plant forests that were historically savanna and grasslands
- c0brac0bra 4y ago
  This may be unpopular on HN, but that's what Allan Savory has advocated for, along with rotational (holistic in his words) grazing of ruminants.
  - greenie_beans 4y ago
    i didn't realize that "preserve and promote grasslands" was a controversial take lol
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  History is gone. Also it is likely, that there were times when those Savanne areas were covered with trees. There is no shortage of grasslands that are close of becoming desserts with one serious draught, but there is shortage of forests, that hold the moisture and prevent further desertification.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    > History is gone. Also it is likely, that there were times when those Savanne areas were covered with trees. > There is no shortage of grasslands that are close of becoming desserts with one serious draught, but there is shortage of forests, that hold the moisture and prevent further desertification. Well said. It makes one wonder how the Midwest Great Plains shelter belt and other regions like it will handle this current dry spell we're in globally.
  - greenie_beans 4y ago
    i love forests too. i don't know where you live, but you might learn something about grasslands from the southern grasslands institute: https://www.segrasslands.org/ https://www.segrasslands.org/ re: "history isn't gone," that's a reductive position. it will certainly be very different millions of years from now, but it won't be as drastic within our lifetime. the ecological history of a place tells us where plants thrive and don't thrive. site selection is a fact of plant success. certain types of trees grow in grasslands but they aren't the dominate plant life — fossil records would indicate this. i'm no ecologist or scientist, but i've read that grasslands can hold water too. just google "do grasslands store water"
throwaway8582 4y ago
Much of the Earth's surface is not suitable for growing trees, either because it's too dry, to wet, to cold, poor soil or lack of soil, etc. The article gives examples of planting in places where trees don't typically grow, on coastlines and in deserts, so it's not at all surprising that the trees planted there died. This is why I've always been skeptical of tree planting initiatives. In areas where they can survive, trees will just naturally appear on unused land, there's no need to plant them. If this isn't happening on it's own, it's probably because the conditions there aren't right for them.
- 0000011111 4y ago
  I wonder what the success rate would be if trees were replanted in forest that burned. And to what extent climate change would make the environment no longer suited for trees? In the US forest fires burn about 7 million acres on average each year. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires The Dixie fire alone was about 1 million acres. San Francisco is 30,000 acres for perspective. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf
- kokanee 4y ago
  Some would argue that where conditions for trees aren't suitable, the solution is to build a forest there. Forests themselves are the best terraforming tool, if you can get them started by supplying the necessary nutrients, energy, and water. I don't know how feasible it is, but using trees to transform parched landscapes is the mission of a company I interviewed at a while back called Terraformation, founded by the former CEO of Reddit.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    The caveat with this is the forests can do ok for awhile, but then a dry spell will hit and it tends to burn down.
  - sitkack 4y ago
    To add reference to the claim that, "forests themselves are the best terraforming tool", one can take the example of Ascension Island. With the introduction of outside trees that formed an ecological foothold, they started cooling humid air and reinforcing the soil so that other plants and trees can flourish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island#Botany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island#Botany https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11137903 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11137903 Once, This Island Had Just One Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZPrk9IZ3Jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZPrk9IZ3Jw
MichaelCollins 4y ago
The problem is with the incentives. We reward organizations for planting trees when we should be rewarding them for growing trees. Anecdotally, paper mills don't seem to have a problem successfully growing monocrop forests on their own properties because they actually have a reason to care about the success of replanting their own land.
- Lendal 4y ago
  I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. Unfortunately the arborists in my town are incentivized to get me to pay their company to cut my trees down and replace them with new ones every 10-15 years or so. We really just need more foresters, with a broader mission that extends beyond simply government-owned park land, who can help individual landowners to plant the right kinds of trees in the right ways.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Can you expand on your arborist conflict of interest. Are they all dishonest or can you simply ask what the expected lifetime of the tree would be?
    - lupire 4y ago
      It's just a a poster being dramatic. Arborists don't intentionally push to chop down tree that aren't overgrown relative to the space available to them. The problem is that people like big trees and big houses, and they aren't compatible long term.
      - pvaldes 4y ago
        Yes, they kill trees. Slowly. Overpruning for money is, sadly, too common among professionals.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    >I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. I don't mean to be rude, but how brown is your green thumb? I get killing house plants, but killing a tree growing outdoors seems like something you'd actively have to do. The most common "mistake" I've seen are lack of care with lawn equipment like weed whackers. Are they just not being planted correctly so they don't have a chance?
nyanpasu64 4y ago
See also https://placesjournal.org/article/informal-settlers-environmental-rehabilitation-manila/ https://placesjournal.org/article/informal-settlers-environm... (discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32726036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32726036), describing how one local-run tree-planting operation has succeeded where government and NGO-run prestige projects failed.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
As the article points out, the problem is our obsession with "trees planted" instead of "trees survived" after n years (n=20? not sure, but at least 10). It's a reason why those "we plant a tree every time you buy X" marketing claims are mostly BS.
- xani__ 4y ago
  It's more than that. Even if planting gigantic monoculture "works" it's not exactly a healthy forest. Ignoring what the locals need/want will also just bring it to status quo sooner than later.
tantalor 4y ago
Did nobody play SimEarth? You have to start with grasslands before building up to forests. And you need the right critters.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
theptip 4y ago
> Not surprisingly, those locals often reacted badly. For example, in northern Malawi, they broke fences and burned a growing forest to get back the common grazing land on which the trees had been planted. In two Nigerian projects, villagers cut all the planted non-fruit trees for firewood, while protecting those that bore fruit. Recommended reading: "Seeing Like A State" by James Scott. The first section on Scientific Forestry directly applies, and the rest of the book conceptually does too. In summary, the state seeks to render its resources and populace legible, because local arrangements are very hard to quantify (and tax) from the center. This drive to achieve legibility inevitably distorts the world they are attempting to understand, for example by incentivizing monoculture forestry (easier to count the trees) instead of natural forest growth (providing many communal resources that are impossible to measure such as firewood, foraging, grazing, and so on). There is a very prevalent idea that "subsistence farmers" know little about the land they work. It's usually the opposite; they tend to have far more practical expertise than the centralized planners. If instead of planning these projects centrally, they were planned and executed by locals in collaboration with central funding sources, you'd be much more likely to get good results. The local farmers can usually tell you what trees will grow, where they will survive, what the village needs more of, and so on. To be more concrete -- why not provide a centralized program that subsidizes villages to plant trees, but does not specify which trees to plant? If the incentives are high enough you'll get people to plant anything (as the OP shows). But at a lower level of incentive, they will only do the work for something that they actually value. That's the sweet spot.
- empyrrhicist 4y ago
  That's the idea behind community-based participatory research. Some people get it.
- pstuart 4y ago
  You're spot on with your assessment, the only thing I'd change is that the centralized management does more than funding -- it provides a library of possible projects with expert assistance as needed. Locals still get control and ownership of their efforts but they have help when they want it.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
How many of these tree planting projects are funded by carbon credits/offsets? Tree planting seems the be the simplest/cheapest project to do that ostensibly removes CO2. Basically, the carbon offsets serve as a conscience salve for rich people to continue their lifestyle, and then these tree projects exist as a way to say that you are at least trying to do something. Nobody really cares if they are effective or not.
georgeburdell 4y ago
Didn’t see any mention of Israel? Their afforestation efforts seem successful
pmayrgundter 4y ago
Great comments about monoculture and poor incentives. Natural forests have a complexity that doesn't seem worthwhile to brute-force by massive tree planting. There's an obvious spatial complexity for different plant phyla patterns (see a bunch of links below).. a kind of blending between meadows to underbrush to trees, mosses and lichen in rocky areas, mangroves holding onto rivers. And there's plenty of fungus and animal participation to consider as well. I like to listen to permaculture people and their approaches.. thinking of the water tables, clay and soil types. I think there's probably also some new thinking to be done about how functional water cycles differ from arid areas and developing long-term plans to coax water back up with strong cloud-seeders, from coastlines and river basins towards inland deserts. That all leads to healthier rivers and tidal estuaries, which are keystones for many maritime ecosystems, due to feeding and breeding migrations e.g. of salmon, crab, eels. I guess I'm saying we're missing the forests for the trees :) https://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbseg/2276/2276110-bigthumbnail.jpg https://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbseg/2276/2276110-bigthum... https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/high-mountain-meadows-adam-jewell.jpg https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediu... https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/536460cbe4b02ae0617f37a3/1576091304859-NP4F76ZHUEQU7CKLZZ7M/GC_MtnMeadows_July2018_1.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/536460cbe4b02a... https://www.backyardgardenlover.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/native-flowers-on-hill.jpg.webp https://www.backyardgardenlover.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Blick_vom_L%C3%B6ns_Turm_HemmelsdorferSee_Ausfluss_aalbek.jpg/1600px-Blick_vom_L%C3%B6ns_Turm_HemmelsdorferSee_Ausfluss_aalbek.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Bl...
- hinkley 4y ago
  I just finished Suzanne Simard's book, which if you ignore the timelines (early 90's) of when she thought about these things, reads like your kid discovering a love of your favorite hobby and breathlessly explaining each new discovery as they happen. The new idea I encountered in the book was one of deep rooted trees hydrating the soil by reaching into the water table and pulling it up to the surface. Particularly at night when evaporation rates drop off. I'd read years ago that some African cultures ascribe this power to fig trees (possibly from Wangari Maathai), but I've never seen anything but anecdotal evidence of this happening anywhere else. She anthropomorphized these things but I suspect that some of the activities she saw could more boringly be ascribed to osmotic pressure. Sugars and water are going to leak out across a gradient at some rate even if you try to stop it. Especially across a barrier that is designed to pass water in the opposite direction.
nathancahill 4y ago
One of my favorite anecdotes on this problem is Guatemala. The laws on the books are pretty decent, incentives for farmers to reforest land where there used to be trees, with the government paying for the initial seedlings and then yearly payments (with verification of tree growth) over 7-15 years as the trees mature. However, farmers quickly found a loophole where they could find a plot of virgin forest, clear cut the hardwood for lumber and then use the bare land to sign up for the program. They would plant a fast growing monocrop of pine and tend it (and collect payments) for 7 years until they would harvest it for lumber. All fully paid for by the government.
- gelatocar 4y ago
  While that is obviously rorting the system, isn't it kind of ideal from a carbon capture perspective? One of the big problems with planting forests for carbon capture is that they often burn down, and even when they don't, the natural cycle of the forest trees dying or falling and breaking down releases the captured carbon too. Harvesting the trees and using them as a building material seems like a better way to ensure that the captured carbon stays stored for longer. As long as they aren't used for firewood...
  - nathancahill 4y ago
    Carbon capture is a tiny piece of the environmental benefit a virgin tropical forest provides. Additionally, while the trunks of the planted pines are used for lumber, the rest of the tree is used for firewood.
princevegeta89 4y ago
Growing a forest is as much an effort as it is to plant it. Of course, wherever the forests have ever been present, those places were being controlled by nature automatically. Nothing has ever changed, except for the fact that we have cut down a good majority of those. To replicate a forest means to replicate the entire mechanics and settings that forests thrive in, not just replicating the presence of plants/trees alone.
contingencies 4y ago
Some practical steps might include staging (eg. first reduce topsoil loss and create windbreaks with native grasses and ground covers, then start shrubs, then move on to trees, finally seed additional biome), always interplanting a range of species, placing protective rocks or other features for initial microclimate (moisture channeling, moisture retention, part wind protection, shade), and ensuring that all species planted are regionally endemic (greater capability to thrive in location conditions). Things to avoid are plants that depend on artificial irrigation, fertilizer, or pathogen protection.
Maursault 4y ago
I think the author is incorrect about no one hating trees, because developers seem to hate trees. The most conspicuous detail in a new development is the absence of trees. I think trees need a forest. The best place for a tree to grow is under a mature tree of its own species. But even trees of different species help prevent damage to each other from winds and storms. Perhaps instead of trying to plant a new forest, we should be jealously conserving and expanding what forest remains. Harvesting timber by clear-cutting should be illegal, and while the logging industry has adjusted somewhat to conservation, wealthy landowners still do it all the time.
extantproject 4y ago
https://archive.ph/7bVu8 https://archive.ph/7bVu8
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Carbon credits from tree planting? Similar to the famous bounties on rats in old France. Rat plantations made a few rich. Similarly, institutions can claim credit for planting 'forests' that are pointless and failures. Sure planting trees is generally a low-yield operations, with <50% survival rate typical. But these referenced projects were abysmally low, egregiously low, around a percent or two. Low enough to see that no honest effort was made.
jibbit 4y ago
~10 trees have been planted on my street (in London) over the past few years. Each cost hundreds of pounds and took months to arrange. Every one died this summer.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Maybe the gauge of success isn’t 100% but much lower - a 15% success rate doesn’t seem terrible, as was quoted for several projects. Maybe we better custodianship you can make that better, but I’ve seen quotes elsewhere that even with the most aggressive stewardship up to 70% of planted trees in afforestation efforts die. Maybe carpet bombing with seedlings and being happy with the residual survival is the game and we should be happy? Careful stewardship may not be scaleable, but mass planting is. That 15% delta might be dwarfed by the scale of effort possible.
foobarbecue 4y ago
The folly of monoculture forest planting forms the basis for a subplot in The Overstory. I can't give a wholehearted reccomendation for The Overstory since it was a bit melodramatic for my taste. The narrative cadence of the book goes something like: tragedy, pointless tragedy, ridiculous tragedy, unrealistic tragedy and so forth until the end... with a dash of interesting ecology and history sprinkled throughout. I suppose it should be read as magical realism with "rage against the machine" vibes.
pbj1968 4y ago
Perfect is the enemy of good.
rinka_singh 4y ago
This is an all negative perspective. There are many that succeed too (Caveat: No, I'm not a forest expert but I do travel). I have seen at least 3 examples of Miyawaki forests that have succeeded close to where I live. I've seen some fairly large and successful afforestation efforts too. While yes, an extremely unbalanced perspective helps us focus on a rather important issue, I do wish the article were a mite more balanced.
Brajeshwar 4y ago
As mentioned in one of the other comments here, we have come to the realization that the last-mile growers are not incentivized enough, sometimes not at all, to "maintain" the trees till they can sustain themselves. The government and public authorities will sign a plan; then it goes down to multiple intermediaries, and by the time it reaches those planting the trees get little to care. It is rampant with corruption and fraud. If I have to put in numbers, here is an idea -- if there is $1 available for every tree to be planted, anyone in direct benefit at the final step gets less than 10¢. Those organizations and people "shouting" about planting trees goes on to the next plantation project, and it goes on. I have been involved with and have invested in nurturing an ecosystem in a remote corner of India. I have got the involvement of the locals, and they know what trees/plants to grow that will benefit not just in sucking in CO2 but bears fruit that the locals can leverage. The idea is to have a tangible outcome from the trees that we can create a circular economy and treat the Climate actions as a good side-effect. The locales have no clue and don't even have enough to survive to care about Climate Change.
hoseja 4y ago
All you need to do is stop cutting the plant life. If a forest can grow there, it will. Planting trees is extremely dumb, they are already optimized to spread themselves! Also, you can't really plant mature forests; pioneer species need to grow there first.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This is one of the "earnest environmentslist thinks we can do better" articles that are so popular with the "see, it was a hoax all along" crowd. Within the intended audience, this is a call for stricter standards to ensure this is done well and achieves its aims. Outside, for people who just read the headline, it's taken as further evidence that it's all BS. A fake solution to a fake problem, both pushed by evil people. I'm not sure what you can do about this, climate change deniers are not famous for their appreciation of nuance, but we should probably take note of it anyway, otherwise you end up with people with very different opinions thinking they are agreeing when they say "this is terrible!". And nerds seem extra vulnerable to being sold this kind of know-it-all, "well, actually", cynicism for some reason.
- docandrew 4y ago
  I’m not sure what climate change skepticism has to do with reforestation efforts or environmentalism, more broadly. Generalizing those with different opinions than you as lacking nuance doesn’t seem particularly nuanced to me either. As a climate change skeptic I’m very much in favor of having more trees around, having less pollution in general, and don’t really care for the idea of covering up vast swaths of native grasslands with solar panels. Reforestation seems like a pretty good way to take advantage of higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
tomohawk 4y ago
Related. Non-obvious approach appears to work: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertif...
carride 4y ago
This reminded me of this biodegradable plant box a company makes to support tree plantings which will not have future water and nutrients supplied. A Shell oil project used the boxes in an Argentina arid steppe. Was interesting to me in their 2018 write-up. They have not yet updated the results. https://www.groasis.com/en/projects/argentina-the-unconventional-tree-carried-out-by-shell-halkis-and-groatec https://www.groasis.com/en/projects/argentina-the-unconventi...
elmolino89 4y ago
The thing is we do not live in ordinary times. Last summer temperatures made many established trees in the cities close to getting killed. Anything with less developed root system and without regular, generous watering probably fared worse. Farmers hardly abandon their crops or are clueless about agriculture, but in many regions this growing season was a disaster. From large scale, low initial investment and high yield tree planting: pick one. Any even the most amateur gardener can figure out that growing things successfully requires checking many boxes. Last but not least: in climatic emergency maybe instead of as we can see a pipe dream of low cost, no maintenance, native species only eco-forest we may start to think about planting almost anything that grows successfully and does not burn too easily.

257 points by kaboro 4y ago

"There is no anti-tree lobby" There absolutely is. In my country, logging companies release statements complaining bitterly about effects to industry when new areas of land are protected from logging by the government. They equally are quite happy to quietly log ancient trees when allowed. Just because people don't march around with their agenda printed on a badge doesn't mean they don't exist.

ianbicking 4y ago
If you add the slight qualifier "there is no anti-tree-planting lobby" then it works... those logging companies will also enthusiastically support planting trees
- rolandog 4y ago
  The same way that wolves are pro-birthers when it comes to sheep.
  - RobLach 4y ago
    Yes but planting trees and turning it to lumber is an excellent way to sequester carbon.
    - rolandog 4y ago
      Oh, agreed. I just wanted to make an analogy about groups that have, in theory, competing interests but can in some cases have common goals.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      Trees are not 100% carbon. Logging worsens soil conditions when no effort is made to preserve it. "Just keep planting lol" is not sustainable. Algae sequester carbon better.
      - jandrese 4y ago
        What logging does is create an economic incentive to plant the trees and let them grow. The problem with algae is that it doesn't have economic value currently. People dream about turning it into food or biofuels but that's not currently viable. Although if you were only interested in sequestering carbon (which currently has close to 0 economic incentive) you could grow algae, filter them out of the water, and then pump them deep underground into old gas/oil wells. It's still a lot of energy but possibly more viable than most carbon capture proposals. Over millions of years that algae will probably turn back into coal/oil. Also, farming algae in natural waterways tends to have its own environmental impacts.
- soperj 4y ago
  There's no lobby, but you count me as part of an anti-tree-planting group. There's a specific reason why, and it's because of how it's done. The reason that they plant trees, is to grow specific kinds of trees that are good for logging companies. So they spray areas that are logged with glycosphate to prevent other plants from reclaiming the logged areas, and then plant round-up ready GMO trees in the area. It leads to these massive mono-culture forests that are prime for huge forest fires. The trees they want are fire-promoting trees (like pines), and the trees they don't (like aspen) are fire break species. They then blame the bigger forest fires entirely on climate change.
  - xani__ 4y ago
- ajross 4y ago
  Only timber species, though, not forests.
BurningFrog 4y ago
Harvesting and replanting trees is not anti-tree.
RunSet 4y ago
> Needless to say, the logging industry was not happy about The Lorax. The book was banned from many schools and libraries near thriving timber communities. Timber industry groups even sponsored a rebuttal book, called The Truax, which helped kids understand the necessity of harvesting timber. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/the-environmental-message-behind-the-lorax/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/the-environmental-messa...

mistrial9 4y ago

a quick read of this -- it appears to be a list of badly executed projects by struggling governments, more than anything ecosystem-oriented; coinciding with "constant topic of conversation in political circles" .. Second in failure rate only to "protecting healthy forests that exist now" ?

orangepurple 4y ago
From a distance it appears as if those organizations are doing those tree planting stunts to tick boxes on ESG compliance forms required to receive international aid they need for embezzlement income. How else do useless third world bureaucrats fund their escapades? Look no further than the recent history of Nauru to see how leadership has zero qualms stealing the future of a whole country then converting it into a literal prison for hire for $27 million a year.

debacle 4y ago

Trees tend to fail spectacularly, even for seasoned growers. The site that I bulk purchase seedlings from estimates a failure rate as high as 70% for evergreen plugs if you do everything right. As you move up from seedlings to 3 year old plants, the failure rate drops to 10%, but my real failure rate is probably closer to 30%. The number one reason is too much/too little moisture, with some pests/disease thrown in. Furthermore, trees need organic material. A lot of it. A tree planted in "dirt" will be about the same size 3 years later. A (young) tree planted in rich compost can double in size in a year. You can't stick a tree in the ground anywhere and expect it to grow without a good amount of help.

smesla 4y ago
What sort of evergreens are you planting? Are they native? I replanted a clearcut a year or so ago and even with an abnormally hot summer and a dry fall I'm looking at 30%, tops.
- debacle 4y ago
  A variety. I'm working to restore a large tract of former farmland, and so we're trying to plant whatever sticks to increase biodiversity.
  - smesla 4y ago
    If you haven't yet, you may want to hire a professional forester. At 70% loss they'd likely pay for themselves many times over and save a lot of headache.
    - debacle 4y ago
      These are seedling trees, less than a foot high. They're expected to fail at a pretty high rate. In the future I'll be updating to 2nd year trees which seem to have a better cost/survival rate.
clairity 4y ago
yes, LA has a program to give away trees for planting in yards and parkways, and my read of the program is that, while it's goal is laudable, the implementation is lacking. earlier this year, a partner non-profit planted 2 trees for us and i planted an additional 2 trees that another org gave us, and i learned that it's not a set-it-and-forget-it type of endeavor. walking around my neighborhood, many of these trees, even though most are native species adapted to the environment, will end up dying because of the lack of care and the lack of education that comes with the trees. beyond enriching the soil when planting, it apparently takes ~5 years for the trees to establish themselves, and so requires constant watering for at least that amount of time. ours sprouted quickly when first planted but then stagnated through the hottest parts of the summer. now we're entering the winter season and i'm wondering what we need to do to revitalize the soil again to help them grow in the spring.

rdtwo 4y ago

Planting the wrong trees can be an ecological disaster and a lot of trees planted are the wrong tree for the environment

biellls 4y ago

Monocultures of any kind are always fragile, you need diversity to have a resilient ecosystem. These projects should benefit from an understanding of permaculture, which is a discipline that aims to create the right conditions for healthy systems. Everything from succession (pioneer leguminous species that can fix nitrogen and improve soil, slowly replaced by other species), trying to slow down and catch water where it falls to prevent soil erosion and runoff and much more. I've heard (unsubstantiated) claims that initiatives in China have already started to take these into account and have succeeded where other monoculture forests failed. A side effect is that you can end up with productive species. Imagine forests where many trees bear fruits, others have acorns that pigs can feed on, fruit vines and understory herbs that animals can graze on, large lakes with edible fish. This is the future I'd be excited for and it's all currently possible with the right policies.

Retric 4y ago
Monoculture of very fast growing trees let’s them maximize the value per acre when sold as carbon indulgences. Actual impact is much lower, but by then they have moved to the next project. That said, in areas that got deforested having any tree cover can make the area much more habitable for other trees. Thus single digit survival rates can still result in new forest over a few decades.
- tomrod 4y ago
  The economic topic you're hinting at is externality. There is also the notion of Goodhart's Law, where any (single dimensional) measure gets gamed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
jandrese 4y ago
Would it really be so hard to plant a mix of seeds? I can see a monoculture if the intention is to harvest the wood or fruit later, but if you're only planting to capture carbon or restore a forest then a mix of trees seems like a healthier option and shouldn't be any more effort. You don't need to be precise with the mix either, a just random chance should be fine.

ianbicking 4y ago

The Miyawaki method [1], which I'm sure has been on HN before, is a very different approach to these projects. When I first read about it, it seemed like a kind of too-good-to-be-true miracle approach, but reading further it's really just a lot of hard work. Site preparation is a huge part of it. This photo gallery [2] gives some sense. It starts with soil testing and soil amendment, I doubt they ever consider the soil "good enough" at the outset. I'm not sure if they also do any hydrological changes? Then they plant a dense and diverse set of trees. I'm not clear how many trees ultimately survive. There's theories about the set of trees you'd use, but I can only imagine some of the process is just natural selection, and a belief that early density is positive to later growth. Bringing it back to technology, I do wonder what tools could support this kind of higher-effort higher-impact forestation. It seems like there's work to be done performing soil tests and understand the results and recommended amendments, including some decision trees around tests and results. There's general guidance on the choice of trees, but it requires matching that guidance against local conditions and local plants. In some ways the process is simpler than landscaping a house: you aren't trying to get a perfect set of plants, and you aren't imposing other requirements. You're really trying to build a mini ecosystem, and the ecosystem is there to do a lot of the work on its own. I am less sure how this approach translates to more marginal locations. It's a bit easier to rapidly create a lush and vibrant forest in India than at the edge of a desert. Most of the examples are in tropical locations. [1] https://www.crowdforesting.org/miyawaki-model/forest-kerala https://www.crowdforesting.org/miyawaki-model/forest-kerala [2] https://www.greenyatra.org/miyawaki.php https://www.greenyatra.org/miyawaki.php

sn41 4y ago
Hmm. Pleasantly surprised to find Kerala being mentioned in this context - I wasn't aware of this. But on a related note, the south west of India has a rich tradition of "Sarpa Kavus", literally, "Serpent Shrine", but which are in reality, sacred groves in some corner of the yard of many traditional homes (see [1] for a typical example) - these are mostly left to themselves for most of the year, except for a couple of festival days. In practice, it is almost a biome within the yard. [1] https://nandakishorevarma.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/a-sacred-grove-for-serpents/ https://nandakishorevarma.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/a-sacred-...
4y ago

greenie_beans 4y ago

and what about grasslands? these projects will sometimes plant forests that were historically savanna and grasslands

c0brac0bra 4y ago
This may be unpopular on HN, but that's what Allan Savory has advocated for, along with rotational (holistic in his words) grazing of ruminants.
- greenie_beans 4y ago
  i didn't realize that "preserve and promote grasslands" was a controversial take lol
hutzlibu 4y ago
History is gone. Also it is likely, that there were times when those Savanne areas were covered with trees. There is no shortage of grasslands that are close of becoming desserts with one serious draught, but there is shortage of forests, that hold the moisture and prevent further desertification.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  > History is gone. Also it is likely, that there were times when those Savanne areas were covered with trees. > There is no shortage of grasslands that are close of becoming desserts with one serious draught, but there is shortage of forests, that hold the moisture and prevent further desertification. Well said. It makes one wonder how the Midwest Great Plains shelter belt and other regions like it will handle this current dry spell we're in globally.
- greenie_beans 4y ago
  i love forests too. i don't know where you live, but you might learn something about grasslands from the southern grasslands institute: https://www.segrasslands.org/ https://www.segrasslands.org/ re: "history isn't gone," that's a reductive position. it will certainly be very different millions of years from now, but it won't be as drastic within our lifetime. the ecological history of a place tells us where plants thrive and don't thrive. site selection is a fact of plant success. certain types of trees grow in grasslands but they aren't the dominate plant life — fossil records would indicate this. i'm no ecologist or scientist, but i've read that grasslands can hold water too. just google "do grasslands store water"

throwaway8582 4y ago

Much of the Earth's surface is not suitable for growing trees, either because it's too dry, to wet, to cold, poor soil or lack of soil, etc. The article gives examples of planting in places where trees don't typically grow, on coastlines and in deserts, so it's not at all surprising that the trees planted there died. This is why I've always been skeptical of tree planting initiatives. In areas where they can survive, trees will just naturally appear on unused land, there's no need to plant them. If this isn't happening on it's own, it's probably because the conditions there aren't right for them.

0000011111 4y ago
I wonder what the success rate would be if trees were replanted in forest that burned. And to what extent climate change would make the environment no longer suited for trees? In the US forest fires burn about 7 million acres on average each year. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires The Dixie fire alone was about 1 million acres. San Francisco is 30,000 acres for perspective. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf
kokanee 4y ago
Some would argue that where conditions for trees aren't suitable, the solution is to build a forest there. Forests themselves are the best terraforming tool, if you can get them started by supplying the necessary nutrients, energy, and water. I don't know how feasible it is, but using trees to transform parched landscapes is the mission of a company I interviewed at a while back called Terraformation, founded by the former CEO of Reddit.
- jandrese 4y ago
  The caveat with this is the forests can do ok for awhile, but then a dry spell will hit and it tends to burn down.
- sitkack 4y ago
  To add reference to the claim that, "forests themselves are the best terraforming tool", one can take the example of Ascension Island. With the introduction of outside trees that formed an ecological foothold, they started cooling humid air and reinforcing the soil so that other plants and trees can flourish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island#Botany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island#Botany https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11137903 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11137903 Once, This Island Had Just One Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZPrk9IZ3Jw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZPrk9IZ3Jw

MichaelCollins 4y ago

The problem is with the incentives. We reward organizations for planting trees when we should be rewarding them for growing trees. Anecdotally, paper mills don't seem to have a problem successfully growing monocrop forests on their own properties because they actually have a reason to care about the success of replanting their own land.

Lendal 4y ago
I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. Unfortunately the arborists in my town are incentivized to get me to pay their company to cut my trees down and replace them with new ones every 10-15 years or so. We really just need more foresters, with a broader mission that extends beyond simply government-owned park land, who can help individual landowners to plant the right kinds of trees in the right ways.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Can you expand on your arborist conflict of interest. Are they all dishonest or can you simply ask what the expected lifetime of the tree would be?
  - lupire 4y ago
    It's just a a poster being dramatic. Arborists don't intentionally push to chop down tree that aren't overgrown relative to the space available to them. The problem is that people like big trees and big houses, and they aren't compatible long term.
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      Yes, they kill trees. Slowly. Overpruning for money is, sadly, too common among professionals.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. I don't mean to be rude, but how brown is your green thumb? I get killing house plants, but killing a tree growing outdoors seems like something you'd actively have to do. The most common "mistake" I've seen are lack of care with lawn equipment like weed whackers. Are they just not being planted correctly so they don't have a chance?

nyanpasu64 4y ago

See also https://placesjournal.org/article/informal-settlers-environmental-rehabilitation-manila/ https://placesjournal.org/article/informal-settlers-environm... (discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32726036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32726036), describing how one local-run tree-planting operation has succeeded where government and NGO-run prestige projects failed.

insane_dreamer 4y ago

As the article points out, the problem is our obsession with "trees planted" instead of "trees survived" after n years (n=20? not sure, but at least 10). It's a reason why those "we plant a tree every time you buy X" marketing claims are mostly BS.

xani__ 4y ago
It's more than that. Even if planting gigantic monoculture "works" it's not exactly a healthy forest. Ignoring what the locals need/want will also just bring it to status quo sooner than later.

tantalor 4y ago

Did nobody play SimEarth? You have to start with grasslands before building up to forests. And you need the right critters.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

theptip 4y ago

> Not surprisingly, those locals often reacted badly. For example, in northern Malawi, they broke fences and burned a growing forest to get back the common grazing land on which the trees had been planted. In two Nigerian projects, villagers cut all the planted non-fruit trees for firewood, while protecting those that bore fruit. Recommended reading: "Seeing Like A State" by James Scott. The first section on Scientific Forestry directly applies, and the rest of the book conceptually does too. In summary, the state seeks to render its resources and populace legible, because local arrangements are very hard to quantify (and tax) from the center. This drive to achieve legibility inevitably distorts the world they are attempting to understand, for example by incentivizing monoculture forestry (easier to count the trees) instead of natural forest growth (providing many communal resources that are impossible to measure such as firewood, foraging, grazing, and so on). There is a very prevalent idea that "subsistence farmers" know little about the land they work. It's usually the opposite; they tend to have far more practical expertise than the centralized planners. If instead of planning these projects centrally, they were planned and executed by locals in collaboration with central funding sources, you'd be much more likely to get good results. The local farmers can usually tell you what trees will grow, where they will survive, what the village needs more of, and so on. To be more concrete -- why not provide a centralized program that subsidizes villages to plant trees, but does not specify which trees to plant? If the incentives are high enough you'll get people to plant anything (as the OP shows). But at a lower level of incentive, they will only do the work for something that they actually value. That's the sweet spot.

empyrrhicist 4y ago
That's the idea behind community-based participatory research. Some people get it.
pstuart 4y ago
You're spot on with your assessment, the only thing I'd change is that the centralized management does more than funding -- it provides a library of possible projects with expert assistance as needed. Locals still get control and ownership of their efforts but they have help when they want it.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

How many of these tree planting projects are funded by carbon credits/offsets? Tree planting seems the be the simplest/cheapest project to do that ostensibly removes CO2. Basically, the carbon offsets serve as a conscience salve for rich people to continue their lifestyle, and then these tree projects exist as a way to say that you are at least trying to do something. Nobody really cares if they are effective or not.

georgeburdell 4y ago

Didn’t see any mention of Israel? Their afforestation efforts seem successful

pmayrgundter 4y ago

Great comments about monoculture and poor incentives. Natural forests have a complexity that doesn't seem worthwhile to brute-force by massive tree planting. There's an obvious spatial complexity for different plant phyla patterns (see a bunch of links below).. a kind of blending between meadows to underbrush to trees, mosses and lichen in rocky areas, mangroves holding onto rivers. And there's plenty of fungus and animal participation to consider as well. I like to listen to permaculture people and their approaches.. thinking of the water tables, clay and soil types. I think there's probably also some new thinking to be done about how functional water cycles differ from arid areas and developing long-term plans to coax water back up with strong cloud-seeders, from coastlines and river basins towards inland deserts. That all leads to healthier rivers and tidal estuaries, which are keystones for many maritime ecosystems, due to feeding and breeding migrations e.g. of salmon, crab, eels. I guess I'm saying we're missing the forests for the trees :) https://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbseg/2276/2276110-bigthumbnail.jpg https://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbseg/2276/2276110-bigthum... https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/high-mountain-meadows-adam-jewell.jpg https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediu... https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/536460cbe4b02ae0617f37a3/1576091304859-NP4F76ZHUEQU7CKLZZ7M/GC_MtnMeadows_July2018_1.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/536460cbe4b02a... https://www.backyardgardenlover.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/native-flowers-on-hill.jpg.webp https://www.backyardgardenlover.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Blick_vom_L%C3%B6ns_Turm_HemmelsdorferSee_Ausfluss_aalbek.jpg/1600px-Blick_vom_L%C3%B6ns_Turm_HemmelsdorferSee_Ausfluss_aalbek.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Bl...

hinkley 4y ago
I just finished Suzanne Simard's book, which if you ignore the timelines (early 90's) of when she thought about these things, reads like your kid discovering a love of your favorite hobby and breathlessly explaining each new discovery as they happen. The new idea I encountered in the book was one of deep rooted trees hydrating the soil by reaching into the water table and pulling it up to the surface. Particularly at night when evaporation rates drop off. I'd read years ago that some African cultures ascribe this power to fig trees (possibly from Wangari Maathai), but I've never seen anything but anecdotal evidence of this happening anywhere else. She anthropomorphized these things but I suspect that some of the activities she saw could more boringly be ascribed to osmotic pressure. Sugars and water are going to leak out across a gradient at some rate even if you try to stop it. Especially across a barrier that is designed to pass water in the opposite direction.

nathancahill 4y ago

One of my favorite anecdotes on this problem is Guatemala. The laws on the books are pretty decent, incentives for farmers to reforest land where there used to be trees, with the government paying for the initial seedlings and then yearly payments (with verification of tree growth) over 7-15 years as the trees mature. However, farmers quickly found a loophole where they could find a plot of virgin forest, clear cut the hardwood for lumber and then use the bare land to sign up for the program. They would plant a fast growing monocrop of pine and tend it (and collect payments) for 7 years until they would harvest it for lumber. All fully paid for by the government.

gelatocar 4y ago
While that is obviously rorting the system, isn't it kind of ideal from a carbon capture perspective? One of the big problems with planting forests for carbon capture is that they often burn down, and even when they don't, the natural cycle of the forest trees dying or falling and breaking down releases the captured carbon too. Harvesting the trees and using them as a building material seems like a better way to ensure that the captured carbon stays stored for longer. As long as they aren't used for firewood...
- nathancahill 4y ago
  Carbon capture is a tiny piece of the environmental benefit a virgin tropical forest provides. Additionally, while the trunks of the planted pines are used for lumber, the rest of the tree is used for firewood.

princevegeta89 4y ago

Growing a forest is as much an effort as it is to plant it. Of course, wherever the forests have ever been present, those places were being controlled by nature automatically. Nothing has ever changed, except for the fact that we have cut down a good majority of those. To replicate a forest means to replicate the entire mechanics and settings that forests thrive in, not just replicating the presence of plants/trees alone.

contingencies 4y ago

Some practical steps might include staging (eg. first reduce topsoil loss and create windbreaks with native grasses and ground covers, then start shrubs, then move on to trees, finally seed additional biome), always interplanting a range of species, placing protective rocks or other features for initial microclimate (moisture channeling, moisture retention, part wind protection, shade), and ensuring that all species planted are regionally endemic (greater capability to thrive in location conditions). Things to avoid are plants that depend on artificial irrigation, fertilizer, or pathogen protection.

Maursault 4y ago

I think the author is incorrect about no one hating trees, because developers seem to hate trees. The most conspicuous detail in a new development is the absence of trees. I think trees need a forest. The best place for a tree to grow is under a mature tree of its own species. But even trees of different species help prevent damage to each other from winds and storms. Perhaps instead of trying to plant a new forest, we should be jealously conserving and expanding what forest remains. Harvesting timber by clear-cutting should be illegal, and while the logging industry has adjusted somewhat to conservation, wealthy landowners still do it all the time.

extantproject 4y ago

https://archive.ph/7bVu8 https://archive.ph/7bVu8

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Carbon credits from tree planting? Similar to the famous bounties on rats in old France. Rat plantations made a few rich. Similarly, institutions can claim credit for planting 'forests' that are pointless and failures. Sure planting trees is generally a low-yield operations, with <50% survival rate typical. But these referenced projects were abysmally low, egregiously low, around a percent or two. Low enough to see that no honest effort was made.

jibbit 4y ago

~10 trees have been planted on my street (in London) over the past few years. Each cost hundreds of pounds and took months to arrange. Every one died this summer.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Maybe the gauge of success isn’t 100% but much lower - a 15% success rate doesn’t seem terrible, as was quoted for several projects. Maybe we better custodianship you can make that better, but I’ve seen quotes elsewhere that even with the most aggressive stewardship up to 70% of planted trees in afforestation efforts die. Maybe carpet bombing with seedlings and being happy with the residual survival is the game and we should be happy? Careful stewardship may not be scaleable, but mass planting is. That 15% delta might be dwarfed by the scale of effort possible.

foobarbecue 4y ago

The folly of monoculture forest planting forms the basis for a subplot in The Overstory. I can't give a wholehearted reccomendation for The Overstory since it was a bit melodramatic for my taste. The narrative cadence of the book goes something like: tragedy, pointless tragedy, ridiculous tragedy, unrealistic tragedy and so forth until the end... with a dash of interesting ecology and history sprinkled throughout. I suppose it should be read as magical realism with "rage against the machine" vibes.

pbj1968 4y ago

Perfect is the enemy of good.

rinka_singh 4y ago

This is an all negative perspective. There are many that succeed too (Caveat: No, I'm not a forest expert but I do travel). I have seen at least 3 examples of Miyawaki forests that have succeeded close to where I live. I've seen some fairly large and successful afforestation efforts too. While yes, an extremely unbalanced perspective helps us focus on a rather important issue, I do wish the article were a mite more balanced.

Brajeshwar 4y ago

As mentioned in one of the other comments here, we have come to the realization that the last-mile growers are not incentivized enough, sometimes not at all, to "maintain" the trees till they can sustain themselves. The government and public authorities will sign a plan; then it goes down to multiple intermediaries, and by the time it reaches those planting the trees get little to care. It is rampant with corruption and fraud. If I have to put in numbers, here is an idea -- if there is $1 available for every tree to be planted, anyone in direct benefit at the final step gets less than 10¢. Those organizations and people "shouting" about planting trees goes on to the next plantation project, and it goes on. I have been involved with and have invested in nurturing an ecosystem in a remote corner of India. I have got the involvement of the locals, and they know what trees/plants to grow that will benefit not just in sucking in CO2 but bears fruit that the locals can leverage. The idea is to have a tangible outcome from the trees that we can create a circular economy and treat the Climate actions as a good side-effect. The locales have no clue and don't even have enough to survive to care about Climate Change.

hoseja 4y ago

All you need to do is stop cutting the plant life. If a forest can grow there, it will. Planting trees is extremely dumb, they are already optimized to spread themselves! Also, you can't really plant mature forests; pioneer species need to grow there first.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

This is one of the "earnest environmentslist thinks we can do better" articles that are so popular with the "see, it was a hoax all along" crowd. Within the intended audience, this is a call for stricter standards to ensure this is done well and achieves its aims. Outside, for people who just read the headline, it's taken as further evidence that it's all BS. A fake solution to a fake problem, both pushed by evil people. I'm not sure what you can do about this, climate change deniers are not famous for their appreciation of nuance, but we should probably take note of it anyway, otherwise you end up with people with very different opinions thinking they are agreeing when they say "this is terrible!". And nerds seem extra vulnerable to being sold this kind of know-it-all, "well, actually", cynicism for some reason.

docandrew 4y ago
I’m not sure what climate change skepticism has to do with reforestation efforts or environmentalism, more broadly. Generalizing those with different opinions than you as lacking nuance doesn’t seem particularly nuanced to me either. As a climate change skeptic I’m very much in favor of having more trees around, having less pollution in general, and don’t really care for the idea of covering up vast swaths of native grasslands with solar panels. Reforestation seems like a pretty good way to take advantage of higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

tomohawk 4y ago

Related. Non-obvious approach appears to work: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertif...

carride 4y ago

This reminded me of this biodegradable plant box a company makes to support tree plantings which will not have future water and nutrients supplied. A Shell oil project used the boxes in an Argentina arid steppe. Was interesting to me in their 2018 write-up. They have not yet updated the results. https://www.groasis.com/en/projects/argentina-the-unconventional-tree-carried-out-by-shell-halkis-and-groatec https://www.groasis.com/en/projects/argentina-the-unconventi...

elmolino89 4y ago

The thing is we do not live in ordinary times. Last summer temperatures made many established trees in the cities close to getting killed. Anything with less developed root system and without regular, generous watering probably fared worse. Farmers hardly abandon their crops or are clueless about agriculture, but in many regions this growing season was a disaster. From large scale, low initial investment and high yield tree planting: pick one. Any even the most amateur gardener can figure out that growing things successfully requires checking many boxes. Last but not least: in climatic emergency maybe instead of as we can see a pipe dream of low cost, no maintenance, native species only eco-forest we may start to think about planting almost anything that grows successfully and does not burn too easily.