WHY YOU NEED TO PLANT MORE TREES

WE’VE KNOWN for a long time that trees absorb carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into wood. But until the past few years this live cycle was only important to the tree itself.

Now, with increasing and dangerous atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the carbon-fixing ability of trees is a critical tool to combat global climate change.

New Zealand has signed on to the Paris Agreement to reduce our net national emissions. One tool we can use is to reduce the amount of carbon which is emitted from our industry, transport and agriculture. Another is to recapture carbon from the atmosphere once it has been released.

This is where the experts, such as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the London-based Vivid Economics group, say there is no other option for New Zealand but to plant more trees and plant them on a large scale.

Some land users complain that planting trees takes up valuable land which is currently being used for farming, but the facts don’t support this. The average NZ drystock farm would need less than 3ha of added forest a year to lock up all the atmospheric carbon the stock have produced. FIND OUT MORE FROM THE NZ FORESTRY OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION, WWW.NZFOA.ORG.NZ