Pakistan completed a billion tree plantation project in 2017 [1]. This is currently being followed up with a 5 year 10 billion tree plantation project, at an annual cost of 7.5 billion PKR (~47 million USD) [2]. Planting 989bn trees for the other 200 countries should not be too difficult.
Poland is paying up to 2000 euro per ha (for up to 12 years) for converting agriculture land into forrest. There is also a lot of additional subsidies for forrests on private land which can add up to few thousand euro.
You can actually make small but stable profit from buying land and converting into forest.
> Priority will be given to those who intend to plant a forest in the so-called ecological corridors, in areas threatened by water erosion, in areas adjacent to inland waters and forests, in areas with a slope of more than 12 degrees. Also, those who have land for afforestation in voivodships with a forest cover of less than 30% will get points. Depending on the species composition of the crop and the previously mentioned criteria, the amount of support can range from PLN 4,984 to PLN 7,624 per hectare. In addition, payment is possible for fencing of crops.
And I believe other EU countries run similar schemes.
Also planting a forrest - as an ecological system - is better to just planting a tree, I think.
Forrest area in Poland is growing since WWII from 20,8% in 1946 to 29,5% in 2016. The target for 2020 is 30% area of the country under forrest and for 2050 - 33%.
80% of forrests in Poland is under management of Lasy Panstwowe - state-owned company with political reach.
That's not where the cost is. It's in the opportunity cost for that area. Entire forests have been destroyed mostly not for their wood, but to re-use the land for a different, money-generating, purpose.
People are free to buy up land and dedicate it to growing trees. If individuals aren't willing to pay the costs of doing so, then why would organizations representing the interests of those same individuals behave differently? Yes, sometimes small groups can get focused action on these issues, but it doesn't happen consistently enough to be relied upon as the solution.
When you can get citizens to consistently try to solve the problem on the level they can control, then you aren't going to be able to consistently get governments to do it either. The options left are to use educational methods to convince the citizens otherwise or go with options that do not require action level buy in from the majority.
Before there were fire departments there private fire services. You would pay a fee and if your house caught fire your service would put it out. But once your house is on fire to a point beyond your control, the fire service isn't likly to save the building. They'll just be putting out the fire. That's good for your neighbors-- embers traveling on the wind could ignite their rooves. But since it doesn't actually do much for a person themselves, not enough people carried fire service to prevent fires from spreading unnecessarily. So now everyone anywhere with significant population density acts collectively to fund a fire department to keep fires from spreading.
Sometimes the things a person can individually do don't work and they need to act in concert to make a difference. Fire control, transportation, defense... health care? Mitigating environmental catastrophe?
People want to be protected from fires, to the extent that enough will support their government funding fire services. Even with fire services provided, fire insurance is a popular product for those with a sizable amount of assets that can burn down. This has enough support to be enacted.
I suspect the same will happen with climate change once it changes enough. The problem is that by the time directly impacting people enough to convince them of the need for action, the ability to resolve the problem will be outside our scope to control. Much in the same way a few cities had to burn to set an example for others. Which leads us to the other problem, we only have one 'city' to burn.
If we try to solve climate change the same way that we solved fire services being seen as a common sense government action, it will work but only after the city is burning.
The study specifically mentions that they considered land not used, including for growing crops (they did mention using land used for grazing, but since cattle has apparently a significant greenhouse impact, I guess it's fair game)
£50 million is almost a rounding error for the UK government - havering about whether the new aircraft carriers should be CATOBAR or not cost £100 million!
That maths don't add up. If 200 countries need to do 989bn, then they need to do 4.945, let's say 5.
If we consider countries with more population are going to plant more (so trees per capita perhaps). We could go with landmass but it takes money/people to do this, so let's go with capita.
Pakistan being a highly populated country and so needs to plan more than the 5bn average (they did 10).
But there is a very long tail of small countries in that list of 200 so many more small countries. Most will go below the average needed and so won't stack up.
Does that $47m cost include the price of the land?
If the government doesn't have that much viable tree-planting space available then they either have to seize it which would make some people very unhappy, or compulsorily purchase it which would push the cost up a lot. That isn't a reason not to do it, but in order to talk about it you need to be clear about what you're actually talking about.
Why only those two options for getting trees onto private land? Why not an incentive system for landowners to plant and maintain trees? Let the government plant trees on your lawn and get a reduction in your land tax.
One option is to subsidize the trees as a future investment for the one planting. While this won't do much to get people to plan trees where cities are at, in more rural areas you can convince someone to plan trees that will be able to be harvested in 50+ years. The only catch is that the people who own land are likely old enough they won't see the returns themselves, but if you present this as a method for investing in your children's future it could get buy in. A contract could also include an early sell penalty to dissuade people form cutting too early. Something like "If you sell early, the government is owed 50% of the total sell value. This percentage reduces by 1 per year until it reaches 0% at 50 years. This is in addition to any taxes owed on the sell."
Also, just advertisement and information campaign aimed at getting people to plant trees in rural areas as an investment in their children's future would encourage more planting as well.
> but in order to talk about it you need to be clear about what you're actually talking about.
We absolutely do need to know what we're talking about. For example, the seize-or-purchase dichotomy is a false one. The article mentions, for example:
> But although tree planting on such a colossal scale faces significant challenges (not least identifying who owns the land in question, and securing the rights to plant and maintain trees there), widespread efforts are already underway. [Italics mine.]
In other words, the government doesn't have to seize or purchase the land. They are after a specific right, which we could even imaging being structured, where appropriate, as a subsidized service that owners of degraded land might clamor to receive.
We could almost even suppose that the people who are presenting these figures have take these things into account, at least tentatively.
Not at all. I don't think a single m^2 of land has been or will be seized or bought for any of this.
Actually, I should have been more clear - this is just the money coming out of the government budget. Some unspecified amount of money is coming from private-public partnerships and from donations. The trees are being planted on deforested public land, or just private land where the owners are happy to have forests/trees up, or in public urban spaces. Pakistan has already been hit very hard by climate change - for example by multiple catastrophic floods in the past two decades. There is a lot of public support for this venture.
I remember hearing about it.. but it should be news head title.
Also, by making it a socially distributed action. To make people relearn, take part, take ownership, spend more time out.. it could probably cost less.
I often think that to make something free, make it part of the culture. People gathering around doing it because it has large social short and long term value.
You can actually make small but stable profit from buying land and converting into forest.
> Priority will be given to those who intend to plant a forest in the so-called ecological corridors, in areas threatened by water erosion, in areas adjacent to inland waters and forests, in areas with a slope of more than 12 degrees. Also, those who have land for afforestation in voivodships with a forest cover of less than 30% will get points. Depending on the species composition of the crop and the previously mentioned criteria, the amount of support can range from PLN 4,984 to PLN 7,624 per hectare. In addition, payment is possible for fencing of crops.
Link in Polish: http://www.lasy.gov.pl/pl/informacje/aktualnosci/jak-zdobyc-...