With a combination of forest restoration and planting new forests, a maximum of 829 billion tons of CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere this century. This is evident from a large international study that was published in Nature on Monday.
Credits: NOS
The CO2 gain from the forest plan corresponds to 22 years of current annual emissions from the combustion of coal, oil and gas. The condition is that these forests are protected for a long time, so that the trees have time to mature.
We wanted to make a realistic assessment of the contribution that forests can make to the global approach to climate change, Wageningen forest professor Gert-Jan Nabuurs told NOS. He is one of more than two hundred scientists involved, led by the Swiss university ETH Zurich.
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Trees absorb CO2 during their growth, so the more trees there are, the greater the contribution. However, there are practical objections: where would those extra trees fit in a world with a growing population and a call for additional agricultural land?
