The climate plans that countries have submitted to the U.N. will do too little to protect the world’s forests and their vast stores of carbon, experts say. Instead, plans lean heavily on “unrealistic” tree-planting schemes.
The climate plans that countries have submitted to the U.N. will do too little to protect the world’s forests and their vast stores of carbon, experts say. Instead, plans lean heavily on “unrealistic” tree-planting schemes.
Countries have pledged to halt deforestation by 2030, and they are making progress on that goal, curbing emissions from the loss of forests globally. But under national climate plans, countries would still see roughly 10 million acres of forest destroyed yearly at the end of this decade and another 40 million acres degraded by logging, grazing, fires, or other threats, according to the new analysis, which was undertaken by an international group of experts.
At the same time, plans call for planting trees, restoring forests, and other measures that would involve using huge tracts of land to draw down carbon. In total, these measures would require 2.5 billion acres of land, an area larger than China, according to the analysis.
Read more at: Yale Environment 360
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