Roughly half of the land targeted by a major tech-backed forest restoration campaign in Africa was never meant to be forest, according to a new analysis. Planting trees in the identified area could actually harm grasslands and savannas that may have been inadvertently mislabeled as \u201cforests\u201d in need of help, the report concludes. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The paper<\/a>, published in the journal Science<\/em> today, takes stock of AFR100, an initiative endorsed by 34 governments in Africa\u00a0and that counts the Bezos Earth Fund and Meta<\/a> among its major funders. The goal of AFR100, short for African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative, is to restore at least 100 million hectares of land by 2030. AFR100 disputes the new analysis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For forest restoration to be successful, the right kinds of trees need to be in the right places. It\u2019s easy to mess that up, and this recent analysis aims to show just how big of a problem that could be across one continent. While it focuses on one initiative, the authors say it\u2019s probably emblematic of major flaws across international conservation campaigns. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n For forest restoration to be successful, the right kinds of trees need to be in the right places, which is easy to mess up<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe had suspected that this is a threat, but just the sheer extent of it was absolutely enormous,\u201d says Catherine Parr, lead author of the paper and an ecologist at the University of Liverpool. \u201cSome countries where there weren\u2019t even any forest at all, planning on planting those trees and badging it as reforestation \u2014 that\u2019s really quite a shock.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nearly one-fifth of the total area set aside for restoration \u2014 25.9 million hectares \u2014 spreads across eight countries that naturally lack forest cover, Parr and co-authors from the University of Oxford and Utrecht University found in their analysis. That includes land in Burkina Faso, Chad, Lesotho, Mali, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, and Gambia. Eighteen countries in total have committed to \u201crestore\u201d an area greater than the amount of forest it should actually have, according to the analysis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe article is riddled with a lot of inaccuracies,\u201d a spokesperson for AFR100 wrote to The Verge<\/em> in an email. Gambia is not currently included in the initiative, according to AFR100, which would bring the figure attributable to AFR100 countries down to 21.9 million hectares. \u201cEven if the Gambia is a member of the\u00a0AFR100\u00a0that small country cannot pledge 4 million hectares,\u201d Teko Nhlapho, communications officer for the African Union Development Agency that co-launched AFR100, said in the email. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n To conduct their analysis,\u00a0the researchers used publicly available information on the AFR100 website and a database<\/a> of restoration projects maintained by the environmental news organization Mongabay<\/em>. After looking up projects taking place in AFR100 countries, the researchers compared those locations to biome maps commonly used to identify what kinds of habitats are present. That\u2019s how they came to the conclusion that many of the areas identified for restoration actually contain grasslands or savannas \u2014 not<\/em> forests in need of more trees. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to the analysis, around half of the total area committed for restoration in AFR100 countries is in savannas or grasslands, where planting trees could actually harm\u00a0the local ecosystem. And since Parr suspects grassland and savanna cover is underestimated in biome maps, Parr says the figures in the analysis are actually quite conservative. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The authors argue that conservation groups need to change the way they identify land for restoration. Relying on measures of tree cover by satellite is one issue. Another is a standard commonly used by conservationists that defines forests as areas with at least 10 percent tree canopy cover. Parr says that process can wrongly categorize open areas with some trees, often savannas, as forest. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Verge<\/em> also reached out to the World Resources Institute (WRI), a nonprofit organization named in the paper that uses the definition of forests as having 10 percent canopy cover and that maintains an atlas<\/a> of areas it sees as ripe for restoration. WRI launched AFR100 alongside the African Union Development Agency, the World Bank, and Germany\u2019s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development back in 2015. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAFR100\u00a0has made clear that native grasslands should not be converted into forests and this is reflected in its principles,\u201d Sean Dewitt, director of the forest restoration initiative at WRI, said in an email.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Both WRI and AFR100 said in their responses that the authors of the article shouldn\u2019t equate all restoration projects with reforestation. \u201cIt should be understood that the total area pledged to the AFR100 initiative is composed of both degraded forests and lands. So it will be a mistake to focus just on degraded forests,\u201d Nhlapho said in an email. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n WRI\u2019s Dewitt says that a \u201cvast majority\u201d of restoration projects affiliated with\u00a0AFR100 are actually agroforestry projects. \u201cAgroforestry projects add trees to existing croplands to improve soil fertility, increase water retention, and reduce topsoil erosion,\u201d he writes. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n However, nearly 60 percent of agroforestry projects use non-native species, Parr\u2019s analysis says. \u201cA prime example of tree-centric approaches being misapplied is using agroforestry in non-forests as restoration,\u201d Parr responded in an email. \u201cWe agree agroforestry comes with multiple social and economic benefits but increasing tree cover in non-forested systems is not ecological restoration.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n As tree planting campaigns have gotten more popular with brands and consumers conscious about their environmental impact, it has stoked conflicts like this over how effective these kinds of initiatives actually are<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The drama hasn\u2019t deterred some major funders<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A 2019 study<\/a> published in Science<\/em> on the potential trees have to fight climate change sparked a controversial World Economic Forum campaign to plant a trillion trees<\/a>. Dozens of scientists published<\/a> their own scathing critique of that research and the tree planting projects it spawned, saying the research inflated figures on how much potential tree-planting has to sequester planet-heating carbon. The chief scientific advisor for the trillion trees campaign has since left his post and was apparently \u201cbegging environmental ministers to stop planting so many trees\u201d at a UN climate conference<\/a> in December, Wired<\/em> reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The drama hasn\u2019t deterred some major funders. \u201cOur partnership with\u00a0AFR100\u00a0has helped us find and fund over 150 [locally led restoration] efforts, and we are enormously proud of the work they are doing,\u201d Emily Averna, Bezos Earth Fund\u2019s land restoration program officer, said in an emailed statement to The Verge<\/em>. Meta didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Trees have become a powerful symbol for protecting the environment and stopping climate change, so much so that they could actually risk overshadowing other wildlife in need of conservation. In a literal sense, grasses wither in the shadow of trees. Their \u201cwoody encroachment\u201d can crowd out savannas. \u201cThe lions, and the wildebeest, and the zebra of the Serengeti, they need those open grassland systems,\u201d Parr says. \u201cTrees are great, but the problem is if we get too many in the wrong place, then we\u2019ve got problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n