In our first science-focused episode of Carbon Removal Newsroom, hosts Radhika Moolgavkar of Nori and Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo are joined by our new science co-host, Dr. Jane Zelikova, executive director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center and joint faculty in crop and soil science at Colorado State University.
First this week, we’re looking at new research showing, “Limited effects of tree planting on forest canopy cover and rural livelihoods in Northern India,” and understanding why one researcher referred to the large-scale tree planting program in Northern India as a failure. We explain the significance of these research findings and the potential improvements necessary to ensure that tree planting achieves its stated goals of sequestering carbon dioxide, increasing biodiversity, and improving the livelihoods of local communities.
Plus, a recent Twitter thread from German journalist Tin Fischer tells the story of a “Trillion Trees,” a figure that hardly held substance when first suggested, then took off in popular culture faster than climate scientists could shut it down. While it’s a catchy idea, the scientific paper used to support Trillion Trees in 2017 was widely critiqued for miscalculations and ultimately rescinded. We look at why this idea gained so much traction and what the realistic role of large-scale tree planting might be in drawing down carbon and addressing climate change.
Finally, we put reforestation up against the portfolio of carbon removal solutions, looking at where it fits in and how it should be funded.
We close out the episode with a good news story from Radhika on the winning bears of fat bear week in Alaska!
Resources
The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting
The Oxford Offsetting Principles & carbon removal, w/ Eli Mitchell-Larson on Reversing Climate Change
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal, from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Hello everybody and thank you for joining the October 7th edition of Carbon Removal Newsroom. This week, we’re going to be doing our first Science Carbon Removal Newsroom and we will be looking into the impacts of tree planting on carbon removal. You know, on the surface, everyone thinks it’s amazing. Who doesn’t love trees and it’s cost effective and meaningful and beautiful all the same time. However, as with all things carbon removal, the devil is in the details and sometimes planting trees does not lead to the outcomes we would hope or want.
So joining me today is Dr. Jane Zelikova. She’s the Executive Director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center and Joint Faculty in Crop and Soil Science at Colorado State University. Jane, thank you so much for being here.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And as always, we have Holly Jean Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo. Hey, Holly, how are you doing?
Holly Jean Buck: Fantastic, thank you.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I think I ask you that every week and you always say fantastic. I don’t know. Maybe I need to think of a new question.
Holly Jean Buck: Thursday is just the best day.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Thursday is a good day, isn’t it? And then I am Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at Nori. And like I mentioned earlier, we are going to start with trees and only trees today. That’s what we’re going to be talking about. And beginning with a paper that came out of University of Minnesota, I believe, but I will let Jane describe it in more detail about Northern India and the challenges of large scale tree planting. So Jane, maybe you can give us a quick overview and we’ll go from there.
Jane Zelikova: Sure. Yeah. So this is a paper by Coleman et al. It includes a bunch of researchers from India and also some from North America. It was published in Nature Sustainability a couple of weeks ago. The title of the paper is Limited Effects of Tree Planting on Forest Canopy Cover and Rural Livelihoods in Northern India. And the paper made a bit of a splash when it came out largely because it does some things that few papers have previously done when it comes to thinking about forestry and tree cover as a climate solution, which is that the authors Did a really thorough study where they linked measures of forest cover following tree planting projects in northern India and also did a series of interviews with communities and households in the areas adjacent to those forest tree cover projects and looked at whether Tree cover increased as a result of tree planting activities and whether the type of trees that were planted were the type that the communities valued and could make sort of a living from.
And whether or not the communities that are adjacent to these projects actually relied on these forestry projects for any kind of support and livelihood. So it’s a really cool combination of doing remote sensing work that is kind of following specific plots of land or projects across time. And linking that with on the ground surveys and interviews with the communities that are directly impacted by the project. So that’s kind of why the study is really cool and really impactful. The other reason it’s really impactful is that it empirically shows that these tree planting efforts in Northern India have not had the kind of desired climate benefits or impacts that are often assumed with reforestation and tree planting efforts.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So one really basic question, Jane, before we kind of dive more into it is when they were planting these trees, were they monoculture or were there any variety of the trees? So was it mimicking kind of a real forest or did it seem more like a plantation?
Jane Zelikova: It was a combination of things. So depending on the project, they did a series of plantations. So plantations don’t have to be monocultures. They can be plantations of multi-species mixes. In this case, there were multi-species mixes that included broadleaf species as well as pine species and some combination depending on sort of the project. What’s interesting is that the governmental entities that conducted these tree planting activities differed depending on the kind of region or specific district the project was carried out in. And had slightly different goals and different species planted and different kind of activities.
So the authors of the study were able to look across a lot of different points. In fact, they looked at 430 tree plantations that have been in place anywhere from 1965 through 2018. And they looked at them in 60 randomly selected local governments. So a lot of different entities were conducting these tree planting projects.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it. So, you know, you said it made a splash. And I think there was a rather interesting tweet or feed from one of the researchers who basically called it called this program a failure. So Why did he think that? Do you agree with him and would love to get your perspective on that, Jane?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I think the biggest reason that he called that a failure is because it didn’t meet some of the stated goals, both for the government of India, but also for other tree planting, reforestation or forestry projects that have been launched in response to climate change. The need for climate mitigation and as a way to meet corporate or governmental climate commitments. And this is a really clear kind of empirical way to show how a particular region where a lot of reforestation projects have taken place, where those particular goals are not being met with these projects.
So we assume that trees are great because they photosynthesize, they draw down carbon. Who doesn’t love trees? I love trees. Just want to be on the record that I love trees. It’s important to note that. But when we assume that these reforestation projects have these climate benefits, it’s often not sort of followed up with empirical analysis. And this is a critical analysis of those projects that shows that they’re not meeting those goals, that forestry, forest cover, tree cover, Is not increasing over time, even as these projects have been in place for years, that forest cover is not increasing.
And they give a lot of reasons for why they think that’s the case, but we can get into that a little bit later. The biggest kind of takeaway is that after you do these tree planting activities, over time you go out and you measure whether or not forest cover is going up. You would expect when you plant trees, forest cover would go up. They’re showing empirically that’s not the case.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And Holly, I’m going to come to you in one second, but I have to ask Jane one quick follow up. You know, in the soil carbon world, we always talk about maybe the carbon sequestration isn’t as great, but there are definite other ecosystem benefits that we all feel pretty good about. Anything like that with these tree plantings? Were there other ecosystem benefits, water quality, biodiversity, anything that they pointed to or addressed in the paper?
Jane Zelikova: So none of those were directly measured in this particular paper. It relied largely on a remote sensing approach that looked at forest cover over time. But we often assume, and I think it’s very often the case that these kinds of projects have lots of ecological and societal benefits. And what’s really interesting about this study, and I’m really excited to hear what Holly thinks about it, is that they followed up And interviewed the communities that are supposedly experiencing these societal benefits from these projects to see if that’s actually the case, because we make that assumption.
But we do often assume, and it’s often true, that when you plant trees, there are these other ecological benefits from, you know, better air quality, providing shade in urban environments, cooling temperatures, you know, sometimes providing sort of water cleaning, etc. So these, these things are Possibly happening in these projects, but they were not measured.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Perfect. Thanks, Jane. Yeah, so over to you, Holly. I mean, one of the things, obviously, that’s so interesting about this paper was the community’s reaction, the community’s use about the tree planting. And, you know, not to make it all about me, but I do remember a few years ago, I read this interesting article, which was sort of an aha moment in my life, where they were discussing trees in Detroit and how All these environmental advocacy and justice groups came in and planted trees in Detroit, and the neighborhood just didn’t want them.
People were like, why? 60 years ago, we cut them down, now we’re giving them them back. And they were like, because nobody asked us, right? Like, this is not how we want to participate in how our neighborhood develops. So I’m curious what you thought about the takeaway from the community, the Indian villages and people in those areas, and what How do you have meaningful community engagement while also making impact in a quick and efficient manner? Is there a solution?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, well, I would start out by saying that this paper didn’t really surprise me because we have two decades of social science research on some of these issues. But I think oftentimes it’s qualitative research. It doesn’t get the coverage that a study like this would because this used some cool remote sensing methods. It also did a survey of 2,400 households. So that’s quite a big number to be talking to. And what they found was 42% of respondents had used at least one of those plantations for fuel wood, fodder, or grazing, but they also ranked their dependence on these as low.
So the contribution to rural livelihoods was modest. One question I have is, well, maybe that says that people are using clean cook stoves and don’t need to use the forest for a field wood, which would be a good thing. And I do wish there’d been more discussion of the social side in this paper, because the text itself really focuses on the tree cover portion of it. But to your question about, you know, what should we be doing? There is a lot of research on writing and writing about this. Some of it’s from the CGIAR centers.
So there’s centers that are run that focus on agroforestry and forestry. There’s things like the Oxford principles for net zero aligned offsetting these guidelines for nature based solutions to climate change. I mean, the NGO community has really been publishing a lot on how we should go about community engagement. But I think there’s a fundamental tension here with markets that want cheap carbon Removals or offsets and actually doing these well, high quality, you know, is going to cost more. So what do we do with that tension?
Radhika Moolgavkar: No answer to that. You just have to, we just have to live in it. Is that what you’re saying?
Jane Zelikova: I mean, I think the answer, the obvious answer to me is if you want a quality product, you, you end up having to pay more right for that. And in this case to do these projects really well, And that to meet multiple kind of goals besides just the carbon sequestration goal, which interestingly is not met here. But if we want to meet multiple objectives, and in the case of nature-based climate solutions, that’s one of the biggest draws is that there are these other co-benefits. We have to be willing to pay for those other co-benefits and not just the carbon drawdown.
And I’ll say like, I think the price we pay for the carbon drawdown is insufficient. But it certainly is alarming when we pay nothing for those other kinds of societal and broader ecological benefits that we claim to really value.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So cheers to that, Jane. But Holly, I’m curious from your sociological background, how do you get people to value something that they have for so long assumed would always be there? I think about like free on the internet, right? We always assumed Papers would be free for us. And then they put up paywalls and it was very disconcerting. We adjusted eventually, but it takes time. So how do you shift humans focus on the value chain in carbon and these other ecosystem benefits?
Holly Jean Buck: I mean, I’m mostly concerned about, you know, I think local people often do have the value. So the question is, are these buyers seeing the value? And there’s certifications and standards that can be good. I think that we need more case studies, more communication that can explain what those values really are, like in the words of people themselves, you know, what are the benefits to a high quality forest carbon project? Because right now the buyers and the suppliers are still, you know, not linked, it’s abstract, because if you’re going to make it into a commodity, if a tonne of carbon Is a tonne of carbon, right?
Then it has to be standardized and abstracted. And so we lose all of that other stuff.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. I mean, it is hard even from a carbon removal space to figure out what the value of the carbon is, which brings me back to actually sequestering carbon. I’ll open this up to both of you. I’m curious whether you see trees as a valid way of Just very narrowly sequestering carbon because we know a lot of different corporations and net zero commitments sort of rest on this idea. So I’m wondering if you, one, think the science is there. Is it too early? And two, do you think they actually can do what the trillion tree campaign maybe has promised it can be done?
Maybe I’ll start with you, Jane, and then Holly, get your perspective too.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, so I think the rise in net zero commitments that is currently underway is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s nice to see people making climate commitments and ramping up ambition, but it’s done in a space that is largely voluntary. There’s really no accountability for these commitments and how they’re met by the various actors, whether it be companies or Governments even, and there’s really little to no transparency about how those net zero goals are being met, meaning that a company can make a net zero claim or goal, and that would require some reduction of like sort of emissions the company can control directly.
And then for anything that’s not easy to reduce, that is largely being met with offsets. But there’s no transparency about what kind of offsets are being purchased to meet those goals. And there’s no accountability and there’s certainly nothing about quality. And one of the things I think we all need in this space is a common definition of what it means to have a quality carbon offset. I think, you know, Oxford’s carbon offsetting principles is a really great guide because it does kind of spell out what it means to remove a tonne of carbon and what it means to avoid the emissions of a tonne of carbon.
And I think those kinds of guidelines are not being followed by many, many companies and governments that are currently making claims and setting net zero goals. So as I expect on every podcast that we record from now on, one of the things I will always call for is transparency and accountability. When we have those two things in this space, I think we raise the quality substantially. And when we know a tonne removed is a tonne removed.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Holly, anything more you might add or a different perspective you might have?
Holly Jean Buck: I would just add that I think that the design of the platform upon which these continuing emissions are compensated by negative emissions, or however you want to put it, is important for achieving those objectives. So can we imagine a platform where you purchase a tonne of carbon removed And there’s like people in the public can see that and they can go and like verify it, you know, by checking in at that forest and like people around the forest can, you know, comment on what’s going on. I mean, I think that we have, you know, the tech to build that sort of a system.
But right now, a lot of these platforms are proprietary, not open. So I think we need to think about the data infrastructure and how that could be employed to achieve those objectives.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, well, you know, not to shamelessly plug Nori, but I will say we try to be transparent to the extent we can. And I dream of a world where verification is not like as simple as a satellite image, but being able to link into that like tech idea of imagery and you can go look and you can see the forest. The thing we struggle with, right, is how do you accurately measure that carbon? And I think that Is it probably a struggle in trees? It’s definitely a struggle in soils. But Jane, I know you were about to say something.
Jane Zelikova: Well, I was going to say from the Nori perspective, certainly using a transparent, publicly available modeling platform would be a good step in the right direction. But I think the other thing that’s happening is the proliferation of all of these different companies and sort of measurement and modeling frameworks or platforms that rely on remote sensing And various claims about AI and machine learning with no explanation of how algorithms are derived or tested with what data they’re built. And certainly no attempt to ground truth those measurements. So one of the biggest things about remote sensing, be it for tree cover and biomass, which you really need to measure well to know carbon sequestration potentials or actualities.
Is if you’re not going out to measure anything, then your measurements are only as good as the algorithms and the underlying models. And if there’s no transparency about those, then we can’t actually check your math. So overall, I would say there’s just a need to have better transparency about data, about algorithms. So we have a long way to go towards Developing the mathematical models to do this really accurately without having to go and make an on the ground measurement. In terms of overall science, especially when it comes to forestry and trees, there are a lot of, not a lot, but there are some really great long term data sets that have linked above ground real measurements with some remote sense data and made really great elementary relationships between sort of what the remote Sensing data show us and what the sequestration potentials are, and they’ve developed those for different species of trees, different sort of growth shapes and structures.
But I think the other thing we have to consider is that these trees are growing under novel climate environments, right? So like we have rapidly changing climate and conditions that affect the photosynthesis and growth potential and carbon sequestration potential of trees. So part of what we have to do is continue to do the science to understand how climate change is impacting tree growth and update our priors and our assumptions about what the carbon sequestration potential is. One criticism or shortcoming of this particular paper is that there were no measurements of carbon sequestration potential.
They just looked at forest cover, which is a pretty good proxy, but not a perfect proxy. So we can’t really say There is no carbon being sequestered here. We can just say that it’s not being sequestered more than it was before the plantations were put in place.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Fair, fair point. All very good points. Thank you, Jane. I think I want to pivot a little bit to this idea because it was such an interesting Twitter thread, again, about the trillion trees and German journalist, Tim Fisher, kind of, I guess, lit up tree planting Twitter. I don’t know whether... I don’t know whether that really happens in the carbon removal world, but we can pretend about this catchy idea of planting a trillion trees and our problems are solved. So Holly, I’ll kind of pitch it over to you. What do you think?
Why did that idea catch fire so easily, especially when the paper has been largely debunked? It’s still in everybody’s public conscience as the way to move forward.
Holly Jean Buck: A trillion sounds cool.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Alliteration, trillion trees. Yeah. Alliteration goes a long way.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And that’s it, huh? It’s just the marketing was brilliant.
Holly Jean Buck: I mean, there’s something about the scale, like a terraforming scale, you know, endeavor that I think is appealing.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah. It’s also worth noting that there was a large marketing effort behind the study and paper. And as a person who writes papers that often are not read and certainly don’t take off and like create policy, I think it’s fascinating to me that the choice was made to market this with a professional marketing firm before the paper even came out. And you’re not going to mark like, you know, the other side and the very, very valid scientific criticism of this paper that ultimately led to it being pulled from the journal.
We’re not going to market the criticism. That’s not as sexy as marketing the original, right? So the marketing efforts certainly helped. The visuals and the alliteration, the branding that went along with it had a lot to do with it. And the timing, I think people were really grasping at something that could give them hope.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I mean, Holly, I’m going to ask you this. How is the average person supposed to Sift through all of this, like the marketing, when you have the people we’re supposed to trust, like the Grettas of the world, telling us that this is a great idea. And then you have policymakers saying, this is a great idea. How does just the average Joe who wants to do right by the world and do something and plant a tree, go about figuring out which way, how to sift through all this?
Holly Jean Buck: Well, they could listen to our podcast. That would be great. This is a big challenge too with climate change broadly. And really we need more people in this space that are engaging to explain the science, but scientists are too busy and we don’t get paid to do this sort of work. So I think it’s on the government and NGOs and others to collaborate to fund positions for people who can do this sort of science communication and Be on Twitter, be in the press, take all these interviews that journalists are requesting, and help calibrate some of this information.
Because right now, this is a huge service that people are doing as volunteers.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, it’s almost like a mind shift in the scientific community that there’s more to science now than just doing the work and publishing the paper. You have to go out there and market yourself, which I would imagine many scientists would find to be Very disconcerting and not what they signed up for when they wanted to get a PhD and run a lab. So I want to end the conversation with this question for you both. So let’s think about reforestation against other carbon removal solutions. It’s well known, but obviously has challenges.
Where would you prioritize funding in investment in reforestation against other carbon removal solutions if we really want to get the most significant amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? So divorcing it from other potential ecosystem benefits. Holly, I’ll start with you and then Jane, you can give me your thoughts.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, well, first I’m going to flag really quickly one thing we didn’t talk about that is important is that There’s more science to be done on how effective this is because there’s changes in the albedo, the reflectivity of land covered that can play into things. And then also it’s been found that trees emit volatile organic compounds that can react with nitrogen oxide in the air and form ozone. There’s a bunch of stuff we don’t know about this at scale versus just planting a forest in a particular place. I think that we should be funding a lot more science on that sort of thing.
In terms of where tree planting falls, I would rather place it under conservation and biodiversity budgets, frankly, rather than carbon removal because of some of these things.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And Jane, what do you think?
Jane Zelikova: I mean, I agree with Holly. Always funding more research is a good investment. I think I guess I’m less worried about the volatile compounds, but it’s a fair point. I am sort of interested in understanding how we do these kinds of large scale reforestation projects and what are essentially novel ecosystems that are changing so rapidly that we have to do like sort of more directed reforestation efforts, selecting a suite of species that can thrive in new and novel environments. And I mean, the other thing I totally 100% agree with Holly, and this is something that would be my go to with soil carbon to first and foremost, we have to protect the carbon we’ve already stored.
And given the changes, be it fire frequency drought, etc, all these things that are impacting both carbon that is already stored and our carbon storage potentials in the future. Protecting the stocks where they exist, especially in sort of really high stocked areas like tropical ecosystems. Where it’s possible is a priority, but we have to do that in a way that also kind of jives with local community needs and we can’t sort of colonially request that tropical countries that hold last areas of forested ecosystems. Don’t use those ecosystems because we demand the carbon benefits that they carry.
So I think integrating sort of physical, natural and social sciences together to like really think about and tackle these questions is really key and protecting the stocks we already have. And then thinking about and modeling how we do targeted directed reforestation efforts, given the very rapidly changing climate would be the next big thing. And measuring, oh my God, can we just measure things, please?
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, Jane, you know, and I, of course, painfully know that it’s just not that easy just to measure. It is so complex.
Jane Zelikova: For measuring trees, it’s actually not challenging. You do need people to go measure stuff. And I can think of lots of ways to engage 18 and 19-year-olds productively to go out and measure trees, so.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yes, that is probably a fair assessment. And I would just say, I love both of your thoughts. I think they’re so valid. I wonder how you scale them and make them efficient and happen in a time sensitive manner because science, the government doesn’t move as quickly as maybe we need to move. And personally, what I’m most interested in particularly on reforestation is how it works within these recently Devastated Western wildfire forests and how you start restocking those forests because to Jane’s point, even the types of fires we’re having aren’t the types of fires that those forests are used to.
So we don’t really know what it means for long-term for them. Will it regenerate? Will they be destroyed forever? So that would be where I would prioritize my dollars. With that, I’m going to turn to good news, which it’s my turn this week. And I took it because it’s fat bear week. I don’t know if either of you two follow that, but I have kids who love Fat Bear Week. I love Fat Bear Week. It can’t make me, it just makes me smile. It is a contest out in Alaska where the world votes on the fattest bear before hibernation.
So congratulations to Otis461, who has won for the fourth time, quite portly, and also for Bear132, Spring Cub, Who was the first ever cub competition winner. So if you’re looking for something to cheer you up, make you smile, go check that out because the tweets are pretty funny as well. And who can’t smile at a cute cub and a cute gigantic bear. With that, thank you both for your time and your thoughtful comments. I so appreciated having you both. And I look forward to our conversation in a month or so.
Unknown speaker: Yeah. Thank you so much. This was fun.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And Holly, I’ll see you next week as always.
Holly Jean Buck: Looking forward to it.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right. And all the listeners out there, thanks for listening. Let us know what you think of the new format. We’re always looking to change and get better. And thanks so much.
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