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A million trees? No, we need a billion !
http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2007/02/15/84419.html

When Nobel Prize laureate Prof Wangari Maathai visited the United States a few years ago she met a corporate group that said it planned to plant a million trees.

Prof Wangari supported the idea but her vision for tree planting was beyond the horizon, having herself steered the Kenya Green Belt Movement to plant more than 30 million trees since 1977.

She had thus told the group that it would be better if they targeted to plant a billion trees given the state of deforestation in the world and the need to rehabilitate the environment in order to combat global warming and climate change.

It is from this vision of Prof Wangari that the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) came up with the Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign which is now in its third month. The campaign aims to plant a minimum one billion trees this year.

Yet even before the UNEP campaign was launched last November, there have been many tree planting activities the world over as individuals, schools and institutions, private sector organizations, and local authorities implemented their own plans to plant trees.

What is required now, however, is the upping of these activities basing on the need for voluntary collective action to fight global warming and climate change.

Man needs trees now more than ever before for several reasons but two are the major ones. Deforestation due to agriculture, urbanization and other human activities is going on at an unprecedented pace.

If reforestation efforts are not taken there would soon be no more land for expansion of farms, water sources would either dry up or drastically reduce flows and flora and fauna would vanish from the planet.

We therefore need to plant more trees so as to conserve soil and water, to prevent desertification, to mitigate natural disasters like floods and drought as well as to maintain the productivity of soil.

The major reason for embarking seriously on reforestation and afforestation drives has to do with global warming and climate change.

The more trees are cut and the more we convert forest land to other uses the more carbon emissions are released into the atmosphere.

Reports on deforestation are alarming. Six million hectares of primary forests, for example, are lost each year due to deforestation caused by logging and other human interventions.

These are the kind of forests in which adulteration through human activities is not conspicuous and where ecological processes are not significantly.

Worldwide, the rate of deforestation stands at about 13 million hectares per year with trees cut for timber and fuel amounting to 3.1 billion cubic metres in 2005.

According to sources in the Ministry of Natural Resources and tourism Tanzania has 33.5 million hectares of land covered by forests which constitute 38 percent of the total land area.

However 92,000 hectares of forest are lost every year due to various human activities including bush fires, over exploitation for business purposes and agricultural expansion.

On the other hand, experts say that in one year an average tree inhales 12 kilogrames of carbon dioxide and releases enough oxygen for a family of four. Further, one hectare of trees can absorb six tones of carbon dioxide in a year.

So one can imagine how much carbon dioxide is released in the air by six million hectares of primary forests that are lost in a year and how the same intensifies global warming and climate change.

Article 3.3 of the Kyoto Protocol calls for the maintenance of forests by afforestation and reforestation, and by controlling deforestation as a means of reducing greenhouse emissions in the atmosphere.

``We need action. We need to plant trees alongside other concrete community minded actions and in doing so send a signal to the corridors of political power across the globe that the watching and waiting is over � that countering climate change can take root via one billion small but significant acts in our gardens, parks, countryside and rural areas`` said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, at the launch of the Plant for the Planet campaign in November last year.

It is therefore time to reverse the trend and mitigate the effects of climate change that are already with us now. Unfortunately, developing countries, particularly African countries, are experiencing increased desertification, food insecurity and exposure to diseases with the rural poor being most affected.

And while it may not be possible to halt climate change, efforts must be directed to adaptation with the focus being on the most affected groups and in this case, the farmers. For if these fail to adapt then they are likely to perish.

Trees provide answers to farmers when it comes to mitigating the effects of climate change since the cultivation of trees together with crops (Agroforestry) can help them cope with some of the negative consequences of climate change.

According to the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) planting trees between crops and in the boundaries around crops can help prevent soil erosion and restore soil fertility.

Moreover, by planting certain fast growing shrubs on fallow land, farmers reduce the loss of soil and improve soil structure in ways that allow it to retain much more water.

In Tanzania agroforestry is being practiced in many areas including Nyandira Village in Mvomero District of Morogoro Region where arable land is scarce and the little that is available is located on hills.

Agroforestry thus enables farmers to retain and protect the soil as well as to grow fruit trees as and food crops on the same small patches of land.

``Optimizing the use of increasingly scarce rainwater through agroforestry practices such as improved fallow could be one effective way of improving the adaptive capacity of systems to climate change,`` says Louis Verchot, principal scientist at ICRAF.

Planting crops together with trees also contributes to climate change mitigation because trees and shrubs tend to sequester more carbon than other crops.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that agroforestry has the potential to sequester nearly 600 million metric tons of carbon a year by 2040, compared with about 120 million metric tons for cropland (ifpri Forum, Dec 2006).

Given that deforestation and agriculture together account for 32 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, there are arguments that farmers in developing countries, who are so at risk from climate change, should be able to improve their livelihoods by participating in carbon emissions trading as part of the Kyoto Protocol�s Clean Development Mechanism.

Carbon payments to farmers could encourage them to change their farming practices in ways that benefit the earth through combating global warming while also helping to raise their incomes.

But a former Senior Manager of the Carbon Finance Unit of the World Bank, Odin Knudsen, suggests that for farmers to earn double from agriculture it needs to switch to a new value position ``In the past, agriculture`s task was mainly to increase production,`` he says and adds that farmers must now look at crops not only as providing food and fiber but also as carbon assets.


This post was modified from its original form on 15 May, 3:12