How would planting 8 billion trees every year for 20 years affect Earth’s climate?

Aug 25, 2021

A worker lifts a tree from the ground at the Toudunying state-owned commercial forest estate in a village near the edge of the Gobi desert, on the outskirts of Wuwei, Gansu province, China, April 16, 2021. Over the last four decades, the Three-North Shelter Forest Programme tree-planting scheme, known colloquially as the "Great Green Wall", has helped raise total forest coverage to nearly a quarter of China's total area, up from less than 10% in 1949. In Hongshui trees have become a major part of the local economy and the area is dominated by a large state-owned commercial forest estate called Toudunying.

Through photosynthesis, trees and other plants transform carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into carbohydrates. Image: REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Karen D. Holl

Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

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Clearing the Amazon rainforest for livestock farms in Brazil in 2017.

The Amazon rainforest is an example of mass deforestation. Image: Brazil Photos/LightRocket

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