This is hugely important blueprint for governments and private sector.” They can also boost people’s wellbeing as part of green spaces, with research showing a two-hour “dose” of nature a week significantly improving health.Ĭhristiana Figueres, former UN climate chief and founder of the Global Optimism group, said: “Finally we have an authoritative assessment of how much land we can and should cover with trees without impinging on food production or living areas. In urban areas, the shade from trees has been shown to both cool city streets and reduce levels of air pollution. Trees are also important in controlling regional rainfall, as they evaporate water from their leaves. Tropical rainforests are especially important, hosting 50% of known terrestrial species on only 6% of the world’s land. Earth is at the start of a sixth mass extinction event of species and the razing of forests and other ecosystems is the biggest contributor to the losses. rees draw carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere as they grow, and planting trees will need to play an important part in ending the climate emergency.įorests are also a vital and rich habitat for wildlife. This destruction is a significant contributor to the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving the climate crisis.
Today, 10bn more trees are cut down than are planted every year. But twice as many existed before the start of human civilisation. There are about 3tn trees on the planet and they play a significant role in producing the oxygen we all breathe. But they did include grazing land, on which the researchers say a few trees can also benefit sheep and cattle. The scientists specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas from their analysis.
Tropical areas could have 100% tree cover, while others would be more sparsely covered, meaning that on average about half the area would be under tree canopy. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined.
The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove just under one-third of all the emissions from human activities that remain in the atmosphere today, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”. Planting billions of trees across the world is one of the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.Īs trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating.
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