Scientists cut down tree-planting campaign
● SA is planning a military campaign to fight the global climate-change crisis by planting at least a million trees, but ecologists fear that such campaigns are a distraction — and could cause more problems than benefits.
Announcing the “Plant Trees, Not Bombs” campaign this week, defence & military veterans minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula challenged armies across the world to plant at least 75-million trees over the next year to slow down global warming — based on the theory that trees suck up industrial carbon emissions that are heating up the world.
But as Mapisa-Nqakula wielded her spade to plant a ceremonial carbon-fighting tree in Durban on Thursday, it emerged that South African soldiers would not be required to dig a million holes in the hot sun. Instead, air force helicopters and other military aircraft will simply “bomb” the countryside with seed balls — indigenous seeds encased in a tiny ball of fertile soil and clay.
Karishma Rajoo of the Durbanbased Global Peace organisation, which is helping to spearhead the campaign, said the hope was that upon landing on terra firma, the seed balls would take root and blossom when good rains and ideal weather conditions arrived. She said similar airborne tree-planting projects had been pioneered in several countries, including Kenya and in the Far East.
However, several scientists across the world have voiced dismay over recent global campaigns to cover the Earth with more trees, warning that quick-fix “solutions” distract attention from the need to reduce human-induced carbon emissions. They could also lead to negative environmental consequences including less water flow into rivers and dams as trees suck up water generated in sensitive mountain-catchment areas.
“This whole idea [of planting more trees across the world] gives me goose bumps. It has a northern hemisphere bias. These people don’t know what they are saying. It does not make sense,” said University of the Free State mountain vegetation and climate-change researcher João Vidal. Speaking at the recent Conservation Symposium in Howick, KwaZulu-Natal, Vidal said mountain grasslands play a crucial role in protecting SA’s scarce water resources.
Extensive research in SA and elsewhere had shown a statistically significant reduction in stream flows in areas where tree and other woody plants encroached into former grasslands, he said.
The conservation group WWF SA has also highlighted the importance of protecting the country’s “water factories” — mountain catchment areas that cover just 8% of the land but which generate an estimated 50% of national river flows.
For several years the departments of environmental and water affairs have provided thousands of jobs to unemployed rural residents to chop down thirsty alien trees in river catchments in an effort to increase the volume of water entering rivers and dams.