Study Says Tree Planting Has 'Mind Blowing’ Potential To Tackle Climate Change

A group of scientists has declared one of the cheapest and most effective ways of tackling climate change is by planting bulk amounts of trees.

If countries around the world adopted a large-scale tree planting operation, it could remove two thirds of human related emissions.

The change this type of project could create has been described by the group as 'mind-blowing'.

Prof Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who led the research told the Guardian: "This new quantitative evaluation shows [forest] restoration isn't just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one.

Tree Planting

"What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed."

Researcher Jean-Francois Bastin from the Institute of Integrative Biology in Zurich says 0.9 billion hectares of new forestry could turn the clocks back 20 years in terms of climate change figures.

It would also be a big win for animals and ecosystems.

"When you think about tree restoration, it's not only about fighting climate change it's also about maintaining ecosystems," Dr Bastin said.

"The forests of the world protect 80 per cent of the biodiversity that exists on land."

Twitter/Shivraj Singh Chouhan

The best part about the idea is that planting trees is a relatively simple and cheap method. You don't have to pump massive amounts of money into research and development for renewable energy or fancy technology - even though those things are still needed.

At the end of the day, you'd just need a few helping hands and a bit of know-how as to where the trees are most needed.

There have been operations across the planet which have seen trees planted in their millions.

Students in the Philippines can't graduate from primary school, high school and university until they plant at least 10 trees.

PA

According to reports by CNN, the Filipino House of Representatives passed a bill on 15 May that makes planting a load of trees as much of a part of any graduation ceremony as getting fleeced for a daft hat that you're only going to chuck into the air and then give back.

Or how about two years ago when Indians planted 66 million trees in just 12 hours as part of a world breaking record attempt.

The only thing that's an issue is that trees don't exactly spring up in a couple of days; they can sometimes take years to grow into gigantic carbon dioxide suckers.

So that's why we'd need to get stuck into it now so that we can reap the benefits later.

Topics: Environment, climate change, News

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie