JOHANNESBURG, 8 February 2013 (IRIN) - It is commonly believed that destroying trees will influence the climate of a region. But scientific evidence to support that deforestation and afforestation influence local climate - affecting temperature and rainfall - has only just started emerging.
Planting trees may not reverse climate change but it will help locally
Afforestation, planting trees in an area where there have previously been no trees, can reduce the effect of climate change by cooling temperate regions finds a study in BioMed Central's open access journal Carbon Balance and Management.
A project that has reforested 3,000 hectares of previously barren land in China’s southwest Guangxi is issuing its first carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism.
The low price of carbon credits is a factor but probably not the root cause of new forestry plantations dropping off to near zero over the past few years, according to a leading economist.
APPROPRIATION of massive land from villagers for tree planting in the Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Forest (REDD) programme is feared to threaten food security, unless the exercise was carefully undertaken.
RIO+20: Reforestation Pledges Reach Only 12 Percent of Target
The world’s countries have committed themselves so far to restoring just 18 million hectares of forests by 2020, barely 12 percent of the goal of 150 million hectares agreed by the Bonn Challenge in 2011.
Mr. John Auta, the Acting Director, Forestry Department, Federal Ministry of Environment, has said that tree planting was the primary solution to climate change.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to bring 0.77m acres land under plantation and vegetative covers in the province next year to offset the effects of global warming and climatic change, Minister for Environment Wajid Ali Khan said on Monday.
