On 6 July 2019, Patrick Pouyanné, the CEO of French oil and gas company Total, announced that his company would invest US$100 million per year in forest protection. Total’s announcement comes shortly after similar announcements by Shell and Eni to offset some of their emissions with forest conservation projects.
Tag: Natural Climate Solutions
“The claim that global tree restoration is our most effective climate change solution is simply incorrect scientifically and dangerously misleading”
In July 2019, Science magazine published a paper titled, “The global tree restoration potential”. The paper was written predominantly by scientists from the Crowther Lab at ETH–Zürich, and from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The paper resulted in a very large amount of media coverage, and some criticism from climate scientists.
Felix Finkbeiner’s fairy tales about tree planting
The NGO Plant for the Planet aims to “fight the climate crisis by planting trees around the world”. In March 2018, Plant for the Planet launched a Trillion Tree Campaign, together with Prince Albert II of Monaco, WWF, WCS, and Birdlife International, among others.
Green Finance Observatory: Five major problems with natural climate solutions
Recently, the so-called “forgotten solution” of natural climate solutions has been widely promoted. More than 150 nature-based solutions were announced at the recent UN Climate Action Summit in New York.
Remember the headlines: Tree planting is our “most effective climate change solution”? Well, it would take 200 years, and we can only plant 10% of the area, says Tom Crowther of ETH-Zürich
“The restoration of trees remains among the most effective strategies for climate change mitigation.” That’s the first line from the abstract of a July 2019 paper published in Science magazine.