New maps have revealed the best “win-win” opportunities across the world to regrow forests and tackle the climate crisis, without harming people or wildlife.

The places range from the eastern US and western Canada, to Brazil and Colombia, and across Europe, adding up to 195 million hectares (482 million acres). If reforested, this would remove 2.2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, about the same as all the nations in the European Union.

Previous maps have suggested much larger areas have the potential for regrowing trees but were criticised for including important ecosystems like savannahs and not considering the impact on the millions of people who live in or depend on forests.

The researchers behind the new maps built on previous work but employed a deliberately conservative approach in order to shine a spotlight on those places with the highest potential and the fewest problems.

They focused only on dense, closed-canopy forests and excluded areas that had suffered recent wildfires. The result was a map showing 195 million hectares of reforestation opportunity, an area equivalent to the size of Mexico but up to 90% smaller than previous maps. They provided further options that, for example, avoid the risk of social conflict with forest peoples, which reduced the potential CO2 removal to 1.5bn tonnes a year.

Reforestation opportunity maps are crucial because regrowing trees is the largest and cheapest option for taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, but tree initiatives need to focus on the most suitable areas to maximise their impact.

“Reforestation is not a substitute for cutting fossil fuel emissions, but even if we were to drive down emissions tomorrow, we still need to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere,” said Dr Susan Cook-Patton, at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and a senior author of the new study, published in the journal Nature Communications. “Many, many years of evolution have gone into trees figuring out how to suck CO2 from the atmosphere and lock it into carbon stores, so it’s ready to scale now.”

Prof Simon Lewis, at University College London and not part of the study team, said: “There have been a series of well-known studies of global reforestation potential that have come up with wildly high numbers. This new study is the antidote to such hyperbole. New forests in the lowest risk areas globally would remove about 5% of humans’ CO2 emissions each year – important, but not a silver bullet.”

The options the scientists created beyond their 195mHa base map prioritised three broad criteria: avoiding social conflicts, improving biodiversity and water quality, and highlighting places where governments already had reforestation goals, making action more politically possible.

“There’s always a set of values or motivations that goes into the way you produce the map, and the answer that you get,” said Kurt Fesenmyer, also at TNC and lead author of the new analysis. The area of land that met every criteria was small – 15mHa – so the researchers hope governments and NGOs will use their interactive maps to highlight the most suitable solutions in their own countries.

The focus on social conflicts was crucial, as almost 100 million people live in the 195mHa area. “Previous studies often failed to address how reforestation could have negative effects on human well-being, especially for poor people living in the remote rural areas often targeted for reforestation,” says Dr Forrest Fleischman, at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the study.

Trees are pretty awesome right, aren't they? I mean, Solarpunks kinda do love their trees as an aesthetic - but those things are actually pretty fucking cool and funnily enough we know still so very little about trees. I really mean that. Given how long we as a humans existed around trees, we actually know surprisingly little about them and how they work. We are only now figuring this out.

Originally we thought, for example, that tree roots just went down into the ground. Like deep down. Now we know that a lot of them stay near the surface.

Originally we also thought that tress were just on their own. Now know that they are using their root networks to not only communicate, but also share nutrients with each other. Not only on their own, that is, but also with the help of fungi, that apparently help to connect whole forest systems with each other.

Trees also are obviously this big thing when it comes to carbon capture. Whenever those stupid big companies will go: "Oh, we are developing carbon capture technology!" I am like: "Oh, I already developed that. Let me introduce you to my technology. I call it TREE!!!!"

Never the less: There is also this annoying thing going on where companies (and influencers) go out to randomly plant trees to make a positive CO2 impact, which is... Not how things are working. Because often enough those trees are planted in places and circumstances, that they are not going to live, let alone florish. Hence the positive impact is at times not as big as they keep telling you - and at other times just outright negated because of the trees dying.

And in a way I do think, we should not only plant trees, but also make sure they have a "good life", even though we do not know how much really they are able to suffer.

So... Yeah, tree's are pretty rad. We should take proper care of them, right?

Bayou City Hemp and 8th Wonder Brewery team up for cannabis-infused beverages in Texas. Compliant with federal and state laws. #cannabisbeverages #texasmarket

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