When it comes to trees for the climate, there are two stories.
The first is loud and beautiful, in Germany we hear it all the time.
She says that there only has to be enough trees in the world to stop climate change.
It is very easy to take part in this world salvation.
You use the search engine Ecosia and the company plants a tree.
You order a beef burger and a Coke from McDrive and order a tree if necessary.
At Edeka you collect points for sustainability, and from ten the supermarket will plant a tree.
Those who plant trees are doing something good.
That is the main message of the story.
It should be good because everyone who is involved benefits.
The people or companies in Germany because they no longer have to have a guilty conscience.
People all over the world because they now have trees on their doorstep, mostly with fruit that they can eat or sell.
And of course the climate, because trees bind CO2.
Do we just have to reforest?
Trees help in this story, they don't harm anyone. Their (hoped for) potential was made clear in 2019 by a study by ETH Zurich that received much attention but was later heavily criticized: According to this, there is still space for almost a billion hectares of forest across the globe, a good quarter more than now. This additional area would then be able to store two thirds of the CO2 emissions caused by humans. The researcher wrote at the time that the trees could “save the climate” and that planting forests was “currently the best available solution to climate change”. Later he had to row back and collect these statements. They weren't scientifically tenable. But the study left one picture stuck: there is enough land. We just have to reforest it.
But there are no blank spots in this world, almost no fallow land that nobody uses.
Even where barren steppe stretches for miles, someone is likely to graze their sheep there.
Planting trees does not just mean using satellites to define where there is space from above.
But to look below to see who is already there.
Afforestation is often a struggle for land distribution.
And that's the second story, it's a lot quieter because it's so far away.
And she's not that pretty.
Doesn't matter where the tree is planted?
The second story takes place in the so-called global south, i.e. in the poorer countries of the world. After all, according to the Kyoto and Paris agreements, the right to emit CO2 is a commodity that is traded internationally. The process is very simple: there are providers of CO2 certificates and there are buyers. For example, investors can offer their projects to reduce CO2 emissions, such as through reforestation.
These certificates are then bought by companies that want to improve their carbon footprint.
Such offsetting of CO2 emissions is called climate compensation.
The emissions at one location are offset by savings at another location.
Since the climate affects the entire globe, it does not matter where it is emitted or where savings are made.
A company like VW can therefore sell a car in Germany that is “climate-neutral” because it offsets the CO2 that is created during production through a forest protection project in Borneo.
Contested ground
The economic logic behind this is that the market will find the cheapest way to reduce global CO2. Most projects with trees are carried out in the global south. However, there is often no clear right of ownership there. Uganda, for example, which has become a popular destination for many project developers over the past twenty years, nationalized the entire country in 1975. People settled everywhere, including in the woods. Over the years there have been reforms so that there are now four different forms of property. This also includes “customary tenure”, a type of traditional law that exists in many developing countries as a result of colonial history. If someone has lived and cultivated a piece of land for years and for many generations, it practically belongs to him. There is usually no evidence of this.