China intends to plant and conserve 70 billion trees by 2030 in its efforts to fight deforestation and climate change, the nation’s special envoy on climate Xie Zhenhua told the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday, as the world’s worst polluter ramps up attempts to rebrand itself as an environmental champion.
The One Trillion Trees Initiative, which is a worldwide reforestation program that was launched at the WEF in 2002, includes the pledge. Funding from Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO) and Lynne Benioff (wife of TIME), supports the initiative.
In a speech in Davos on Tuesday, Xie said the 70 billion trees commitment was to “green our planet, combat climate change, and increase forest carbon sinks.” It builds on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2020 pledge to have China achieve peak carbon emission by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
There have been other significant tree-related pledges in recent years, though none approach China’s. For example, according to the One Trillion Tree Initiative’s website, the U.S. has pledged to “conserve, restore and grow more than 955 million trees…by 2030,” and, under the European Green Deal, the E.U. has committed to “planting at least 3 billion additional trees” in that same time frame.
Reforestation has been criticized by environmentalists as being used as an excuse to cover up rising greenhouse gas emissions. “Promoting nature at large scales can be fantastic if done in an ecologically responsible way, but it should not distract from efforts to decarbonize,” says Tom Crowther, an environmental scientist at ETH Zurich. China has been involved in extensive reforestation efforts in the past with varying degrees of success. In 1978, it launched a “Great Green Wall” to combat the encroachment of the Gobi Desert, with 2,800 mi of forest strips planned by 2050. The stability of thousands of acres worth of shifting dunes has led to a decrease in the incidence of frequent sandstorms, which plague Beijing most often between 2009-2014.
Reforestation has been criticized by environmentalists as being used to disguise rising greenhouse gas emissions. “Promoting nature at large scales can be fantastic if done in an ecologically responsible way, but it should not distract from efforts to decarbonize,” says Tom Crowther, an environmental scientist at ETH Zurich. China has been involved in extensive reforestation efforts in the past with varying degrees of success. In 1978, it launched a “Great Green Wall” to combat the encroachment of the Gobi Desert, with 2,800 mi of forest strips planned by 2050. The stability of thousands of acres worth of shifting dunes has led to a decrease in the incidence of frequent sandstorms, which plague Beijing most often between 2009-2014.
However, problems like land erosion and overfarming have stalled many efforts to restore the Great Green Wall. Some soils were also unsuitable for life due to chronic water pollution. Concerns about biodiversity are also raised because most of the efforts to reforest have been focused on one species. This makes it unappealing to bird life, and leaves them vulnerable for blights. A single disease in 2000 claimed 1 Billion poplar trees from the west province of Ningxia. This was a devastating blow to two decades of hard work.
“Any tree planting should also take biodiversity into consideration,” Li Shuo, senior climate and energy policy officer for Greenpeace East Asia, tells TIME. “We all know how monoculture is bad for our planet. A robbing Peter (biodiversity) to pay Paul (climate) dynamic should be avoided.”
China’s reforestation efforts have improved in recent years thanks to international assistance and private financing. It is not easy to find hard numbers. China has claimed to have restored more than 70,000,000 hectares of forest over the last decade. However, a 2021 United Nations report report says China’s forest cover increased from 157 million hectares in 1990 to 220 million hectares in 2020. China’s 14th “Five Year Plan,” formally adopted in March 2021, has a stated target of increasing forest coverage to 24.1% by 2025, and forest stock volume up to 19 billion cubic meters.
That said, it’s unclear how much of the 70 billion commitment will be new trees. The exact wording of Xie’s pledge concerns “actions to plant, conserve, restore and manage,” which opens the possibility that existing forests may be included without additional action. In fact, governments and corporations around the globe count existing forest-protected forests in their carbon-sink footprints, which includes the U.S.
Certainly, China is ramping up efforts to engage positively on climate as it faces increased international censure on myriad other issues, including its persecution of Uighur Muslims and other minorities, and most recently its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Xie, contrary to the strict COVID-19 travel protocol for Chinese officials is on a whistlestop European tour. After Davos, John Kerry, U.S. climate ambassador, meets Xie at the G7 Climate Ministerial Summit in Berlin, Wednesday. He is then followed by meetings in Stockholm with other senior climate officials.
It’s a “sign that China is still interested in playing the climate card to improve [and] stabilize its relationships with other powers,” says Li.
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