The biodiversity strategy adopted by Europe calls for 3 billion trees to be planted within 10 years. The project would like to stop the desertification of the Sahel by restoring 100 million hectares of forests by 2030. Meanwhile, China plans to conserve and reforest areas with 70 billion trees. These strategies imply that more abundant forests will help reduce global warming. However, this is not always true.
In fact, a study published in Science explains how real climate cooling would be achieved by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via forests. However, this is cancelled out by changes in the composition of the atmosphere and the decrease in surface reflectivity. Thus, there is an overestimation of the benefits, compared to the efforts of forestation.
Planting trees on a large scale therefore generates feedbacks within the Earth’s climate system that lead to increased global warming