Study: Tree Planting Can Harm or Protect Ecosystems
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- Researchers found that land-intensive carbon removal strategies would overlap with up to 13% of global climate refugia areas under decarbonization scenarios analyzed in the study.
- The study identified western Africa as one region where scenarios place energy-crop production directly atop important biodiversity areas.
- Strict enforcement of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework's target to bring loss of high-biodiversity areas near zero by 2030 would make more than 50% of land allocated for carbon removal in the assessed scenarios unavailable.
- Forest restoration in already-degraded lands could create green corridors that reconnect fragmented habitats, turning carbon removal into a net benefit for biodiversity rather than a cost.
- Biodiversity loss has been running at 2%–6% per decade over the last 30–50 years, driven by resource extraction, climate change, pollution, and invasive species, according to the researchers.
- The authors stressed that rapid and deep emissions cuts remain the best path to limit warming and reduce the need for carbon removal and its associated biodiversity risks.
Why it matters: With global CO2 emissions near 42 billion metric tons annually and still rising, governments are counting on land-based carbon removal to meet Paris Agreement goals — but this study shows that more than half of that land could be off-limits if biodiversity commitments are enforced, forcing policymakers to choose between climate targets and ecosystem protection unless they plan site selection more carefully.
