• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
  FEATURED
Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote September 20, 2023
Indoor Heat Leaves Canadians Unsafe with ‘No Escape’, CBC Investigation Finds September 20, 2023
Agrivoltaics a Win-Win for Farmers, Communities, Solar Developers, and Alberta’s UCP September 20, 2023
‘Beginning of the End’ for Oil and Gas as IEA Predicts Pre-2030 Peak September 19, 2023
‘Turning Point’ for PR Industry as Clean Creatives Targets Fossil Industry Contracts September 19, 2023
Next
Prev

Forest Regeneration Depends on Forest People’s Knowledge

August 26, 2021
Reading time: 5 minutes
Full Story: Climate News Network @ClimateNewsDay
Primary Author: Tim Radford

1
SHARES
 

Trees are vital for solving the climate crisis. But there’s nothing simple about the forested world, as forest people know.

Here’s something you perhaps didn’t know (but you can be sure forest people did), Climate News Network reports: Rainforests make their own rain. Just how much rain they make is a revelation. The process starts with evaporated ocean, which condenses over coastal forest: thereafter, the trees get to work.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
Subscribe

The initial deposit of rain will be transpired through the foliage, back into the air to be caught in a pattern of winds that might even be helped by the trees themselves: the same water will fall again across the forest five or six times before journey’s end.

The scale of this natural corporate utility service is colossal: one pilot followed the Amazon’s own flying river from Belém near the Atlantic coast across to the Andes, where the airstream and clouds of vapour turned south to reach the coast again at São Paulo, at the same time transporting 3,200 cubic metres of water a second.

There’s no case for doubt. One of the plane’s passengers collected air samples along the way: once inland, the water vapour had the molecular signature associated with vegetation rather than freshly evaporated seawater.

And somehow the forest actually adds to the delivery: at one place near the ocean, the fall is 215 centimetres a year; at the heart of Amazonas it is somehow 245 centimetres.

Trees as Rainmakers

The phenomenon known as the flying river is not unique to the Amazon. Others cross North America, the Congo rainforest, the Sahel, and Ethiopia. The world’s most mighty high-altitude aquifer runs for 6000 kms west-to-east across the Eurasian landmass, taking six months, at the end of which four-fifths of the rain in northern China has been generated by the great boreal forest that begins in Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Trees make the rain. Arid places may be treeless not because they are arid; they could be arid because someone cleared the foliage.

A Trillion Trees: How We Can Reforest Our World, by Fred Pearce, is a reporter’s book. Pearce has been reporting the science and impacts of the environment for the New Scientist and other journals for four decades or more.

He doesn’t just deliver the big picture: he illuminates the detail. He goes to forests and the desolate landscapes where forests had once flourished. He meets scientists, activists, campaigners, government officials, loggers, farmers, businesspeople, politicians, and where possible the Indigenous peoples of the forest.

He isn’t just there for the rainforest: he knows the American landscape, the great forests of the north, the plantations of Israel, the woodlands of Europe, and the mangroves of the African shore, and he introduces the people to whom these places matter.

This is the book’s strength, and occasionally its weakness: just as the dense understory slows the trek through the great forest, so the vigorous tangle of evidence and counter-argument sometimes leaves the reader a little confused.

That seeming weakness is best considered part of the book’s big message: forests and trees may be simply marvellous, but they are never simple. There is good evidence that trees cool the planet, and manage their own airflow, but not so good that it is not disputed.

There is convincing evidence that trees emit volatile organic compounds that help the rain-making process but also extend the life of that potent atmospheric greenhouse gas, methane: convincing enough to permit at least one scientist to argue, seriously, that forests might not cool the world after all, even as they absorb that other greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

And along the way Pearce and his articulate arboreal experts deliver other challenges to the orthodoxies of popular ecology. Big money and unthinking greed help in the destruction of forests everywhere, but the richer the nation, the more likely it is to be extending its own canopy. Between 1990 and 2015, high-income countries on average increased forest cover by 1.3%. Low- to middle-income countries, however, lost 0.3%, while the poorest of all bade farewell to 0.7%.

It would be nice to think that “levelling-up” would play its role in slowing climate change. But, of course, the rich nations are exporting deforestation in the service of trade. The poor world’s forests are being felled and land cleared for our beef and cattle fodder, our coffee, our chocolate.

Second Thoughts

In the course of this absorbing book, Pearce undertakes some enthusiastic root-and-branch re-examination of other arboreal orthodoxies. North America was not once covered by “endless pristine forest”. For millennia, forests have been managed by Indigenous peoples; the same is true for African and South American jungles.

Plantation—commercial or otherwise—may not be a good way to restore global canopy. Systematic, government-endorsed “greening projects” may not be the best solution to either carbon absorption or biodiversity restoration. It might be better to leave nature to do what nature does best: the results of “wilding” what was once degraded or deserted land can be remarkable.

Agroforestry—partnering of trees and crops—also has a lot going for it. Unexpectedly, the seeming connection between land degradation and over-population isn’t really there. In the words of one research paper, “population density is positively correlated with the volume of planted woody biomass.”

And on the evidence so far, centralized policy and government initiatives might be less effective than Indigenous or local guardianship. Where communities do have genuine control of their own woodlands, community management of the world’s forests “works staggeringly well.”

So there is a case for people power, after all. Pearce writes: “If, as I believe, natural regrowth has to be the basis for the renaissance of the world’s trees, then the custodians of that process must be the people who live in, among, and from them …They know them best and need them most.” − Climate News Network



in Africa, Brazil, Canada, Carbon Levels & Measurement, China, Climate & Society, Climate Impacts & Adaptation, Climate News Network, Environmental Justice, First Peoples, Forests & Deforestation, International Security & War, Jurisdictions, Middle East, South & Central America, UK & Europe, United States, Water

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Jon Sullivan/flickr
Ontario

Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote

September 21, 2023
334
Rewat Wannasuk/Pexels
Heat & Power

Virtual Power Plants Could Cut Peak Demand 20%, Save U.S. Grid $10B Per Year

September 20, 2023
1
Jeremy Bezanger/Unsplash
Heat & Temperature

Indoor Heat Leaves Canadians Unsafe with ‘No Escape’, CBC Investigation Finds

September 20, 2023
1

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Jon Sullivan/flickr

Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote

September 20, 2023
334
/Piqusels

‘Beginning of the End’ for Oil and Gas as IEA Predicts Pre-2030 Peak

September 19, 2023
356
Clean Creatives

‘Turning Point’ for PR Industry as Clean Creatives Targets Fossil Industry Contracts

September 19, 2023
233
William Munoz/Flickr

‘Obituary-Changing’ Revelations Show Exxon’s Tillerson Undermining Climate Science

September 19, 2023
186
HiMY SYeD/flick

Ontario Waits 8 Months to Release Dire Climate Impact Report

September 14, 2023
486
Beckyq6937/Wikimedia Commons

Solar Geoengineering Means ‘Game Over’ for Life on Earth, Critics Warn

September 19, 2023
97

Recent Posts

Rewat Wannasuk/Pexels

Virtual Power Plants Could Cut Peak Demand 20%, Save U.S. Grid $10B Per Year

September 20, 2023
1
Jeremy Bezanger/Unsplash

Indoor Heat Leaves Canadians Unsafe with ‘No Escape’, CBC Investigation Finds

September 20, 2023
1
Wesley Fryer/flickr

Smart Thermostats Boost Grid Stability Amid Intense Heat

September 20, 2023
1
Cullen328/wikimedia commons

Manufactured Housing Could Dent the Affordable Housing Crunch with Energy-Efficient Designs

September 20, 2023
1
Mr Renewables/Wikipedia

Californians Fight for Approval of New Community Solar Plan

September 20, 2023
2
Asurnipal/wikimedia commons

Agrivoltaics a Win-Win for Farmers, Communities, Solar Developers, and Alberta’s UCP

September 20, 2023
1
Next Post
Wildfire

Firefighters Lay Out ‘Critical Resource Needs’ as Caldor Fire Prompts New Evacuations

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
The Energy Mix - Energy Central
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}