Is “the race to trees” going to leave us running in circles?
You’ve seen private companies advertise the idea for over a decade now. “Buy a toilet roll, we’ll plant a tree.” “Fly with us and we’ll plant per mile flown.” Companies from Andrex to British Airways jostle for your money by promising to invest theirs in our air.
As consumers become more conscious about the ethics behind the companies they purchase from, there’s more and more pressure put onto companies to show that they care about the issues affecting their target market.
Even beyond massive conglomerates, politicians all over the world have been championing “carbon neutrality” as the big step forward in the battle against climate change.
In 2021, 103 countries and hundreds more companies attended the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. The UN encouraged the target of carbon neutrality by 2050 for all present; encouraging them to set their own “ambitious targets” for 2030.
Speeches from presidents, prime ministers and CEOs all echoed the same sentiment. Boris Johnson said at the summit that “we need to pledge collectively to achieve carbon neutrality.”
The premise is simple: carbon absorbing projects will be proposed and assigned a number of carbon credits should they be given the go-ahead. Kilotons of carbon emitted by companies or governments will be measured, and they will then need to purchase the relevant number of credits to offset their emissions.
This is most commonly thought of as being done via the planting of trees but can also be achieved with other methods like soil maintenance and ocean fertilisation.
The targets set by the UN encourage intercountry co-operation, whereby development on required public infrastructure can be done in Germany, and the company with the contract can sequester land anywhere in the world to offset their impact.
Carbon sequestration companies have been set up to broker deals between those looking to sell or lease land for proposed projects, and those looking to purchase carbon credits.
Bhumika Thakur is the Program Lead of Carbon and Plastic Finance at GHG Mitigation. She said: “There are two types of carbon markets: voluntary and compliance. I work for the voluntary carbon market.
“Any industry or company that want to offset their carbon emissions can finance the carbon reduction projects in India through purchasing carbon credits from us.
“There are various platforms that issue carbon credits. We develop carbon reduction projects or source such ongoing projects.
“The project goes through verification or validation from authorised validators, the carbon deduction potential or how much carbon has already been removed by the project is calculated, and accordingly the carbon credits are issued by the platform.
“We work mainly with companies based in developed nations. Previously, a lot of credits were generated from renewable energy plants; but currently a lot of focus is being done on nature-based solutions, so forest projects are in high demand.”
Land that was otherwise baron and unutilized in India is now being positively sequestered and developed on. Which also generates income for rural communities.
But while these projects take place, many have criticised the Indian and Chinese governments for failing to commit to the UN’s proposed targets. Instead opting to go carbon neutral by 2070 and 2060 respectively.
Both are developing nations with India still producing 55% of its energy through coal. India’s targets are still positive, making a pledge to change to at least 50% renewables by 2030.
Beyond this though, concerns have been raised about the distribution of carbon credits. While countries like India require the use of fossil fuels just now to develop their economy, many already established companies can use the scramble for land as an opportunity to greenwash and further profits over real climate action.
Thakur said: “Personally, I am not in favour of carbon credits, and no they are definitely not the solution.
“They are good in some ways. For example, funding cook stove projects could really help the rural population in transitioning to clean energy solutions which is much required.
“But by selling carbon credits, we are basically giving a pass to industries to emit carbon. Right now we need decarbonisation at a massive rate to reverse climate change, which means reducing emissions all together rather than replacing them with some carbon offset project.”
In the UK, companies have rushed to buy or lease land, setting themselves goals for the next few decades.
In comparison to India, the UK doesn’t have much baron land. Many of the projects involve planting trees in already established forests, peat land restoration, or creating new forests in what has previously been farmland.
For many farmers in the UK, the ability to diversify their income has been more than welcome. The ability to lease land out for decades to ensure a steady stream of money is far more stable than using it for food production.
Kate Hopper, Climate Policy Manager for the National Farmers Union of Scotland said: “Land valleys in Scotland are going up significantly, and that's for hill farm and land that's suitable for planting trees, but also for lowland farms, which are suitable for arable.
“So, it's resulting in an issue for farmers that we are in an unregulated market. There's potentially real benefits for us to be able to offset our own emissions, but there's a real demand for land which is potentially stopping new entrants or causing issues for farmers that wish to potentially sell carbon credits because it's unregulated, so it's a very complicated situation.
“Our position is that we see significant benefits for our members and carbon farming is a term that's being used in Europe, and we see the benefits of both being able to do some missions and trade on what we have as land in Scotland.
“We have 80% the land under agriculture control, so there's a huge potential for it as a market to support our agriculture businesses in the future.”
Many Scottish based companies have purchased vast amounts of land throughout Scotland looking to offset their emissions. Beer company Brewdog have purchased a 9,308-acre (37.7km ²) plot in the highlands with the aim to develop a forest over the coming years.
While the positive aspects of carbon neutrality can be easily seen. There is a real fear that the sudden rush to development could result in damage in the long term.
Kate Hopper said: “What we have in Scotland is very little old trees of boreal forests and very northern highland Caledonian forests, they were completely decimated.
“It's one of the reasons why so much carbon was released into the atmosphere, because we took out all the Northern European forests, which stored tonnes of carbon. What we've got left is temperate forests, which aren't as quite as good, and then we've got soils.
“So, of all the different types of storage of carbon across the UK and across Scotland, the best really is the old Caledonian forests. We know that it's really good at storing carbon in soil and in the trees, and then second best is actually storing carbon in the soil.
“Now, if you plant temperate trees, that's our deciduous and Sitka spruce type stuff. If you plant that into soil, it then takes up that carbon into the tree, but there's less carbon stored in that tree over the course of the lifetime in the soil.
“That is something that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are recognising that it's really important we know what the actual impact of the carbon sequestration that we do is going to be. We've got to get the right type of sequestration in the right place.
“So, for example, we have got tonnes of upland grasslands which is managed, it's grazed, but that grassland is fantastic at storing carbon in the soil. So, if you then planted trees on it, what would be the impact on that soil carbon in the long term? We don't know that.
“We haven't soil sampled the whole of Scotland to see how much carbon is there, we're just planting trees willy-nilly on it, thinking the tree is better than soil and we need to be really careful that we're not jumping ahead and actually impacting on our soil carbon stocks by planting trees on it.
“One of the things the Scottish Government are doing is the national test programme. It is a way of putting some funding into testing all our farms for their carbon audits. Are you sequestering sort carbon? Which ways are you doing it? How much are you emitting? What's your balance at the moment?
“The government are baselining everybody, and then they’re going to do carbon sampling of the soil to see how much carbon is stored in different soils across Scotland so we've got an evidence base to say, “well actually, all our upland hill farms, it’s much better keeping that as grassland and then managing it with high quality sheep and deer and cows than planting it all with deciduous trees or Sitka spruce,” which actually, in the long term, is not as good as storing carbon as soil is.
“I think what we need to know is that evidence base, and then to make the right decisions. We keep saying “right tree, right place,” because it's really important to get that right.
In 2020, 54% of the food consumed in the UK was produced by British farmers. The rest was imported, with 70% of the imports having come from the EU.
Post Brexit, some of this food will likely need to be brought in from further afield.
Kate Hopper said: “The IPCC, in their most recent report on mitigation really sets out that there's a big risk in jumping ahead with mitigation measures without thinking about the consequences.
“For us in agriculture in the UK, food and food security is just as important as trying to ensure that we're actually sequestering carbon and we're tackling our greenhouse gas emissions.
“Because, as I say, otherwise we just end up offshoring it, and we need to be careful that we're not doing that in the long run.
“I think the race to trees is an issue.”