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So I'm aware that there's a problem with "just planting trees and expecting everything to work out". Things like growing wrong trees.
But I assume they're planting native trees, so what exactly is the problem?
The issue is that you might not end up at the desired ecosystem you want. While natives are good, you need to consider topographic, climatic, and edaphic conditions to be successful. It doesn't make sense, for instance to plant a bunch of cottonwood trees on sandy sites, because they'll die off. More importantly, however, it doesn't make sense to plant monocultures of native species as you don't end up where you want to. This second point is often what's done with commitments like this because it's easy, and planting diverse communities is difficult both in terms of physical labour, but also logistics. Some species need their seeds to be heat or cold scarified and that also takes time when you're wanting an assload of seedlings right away.
Even native trees can need help to establish. A common thing that happens with massive planting is the land chosen isn't really able to grow trees without additional water or nutrients, so within a year or two 90% of the trees are dead.
Also this. while planting is good and well, it's hilarious to think that it's the magic bullet to an insanely complex issue (with next to no social buy in, sadly).
if we increase our soil carbon by 1% globally, we'll have saved the planet!
Lol. lmao even. 1% is 10,000 ppm, which equates to 24,000 kg/ha of organic CARBON across the board. Conversion rates organic matter to organic carbon are slow, and much, much lower than 1:1.... now you begin to see the problem...
Yup, it's mostly greenwashing to distract people from the need for any real action (abolishing capitalism, for starters).