Planting Trees May Be an Awful Way to Fight Climate Change

Let’s make one thing clear right away: Planting trees and having a diverse array of them is a great way to improve air quality, promote biodiversity, and absorb harmful carbon dioxide emissions from the air. It’s a crucial component of fighting the effects of anthropogenic climate change and planting efforts need to be ramped up in order to stave off environmental disaster.

However, if it’s done the wrong way, it could actually have a very negative effect on our environment. Unfortunately, that might be the case when it comes to carbon-offset planting—a popular method for large companies to offset their carbon footprint. A paper published today in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution that found carbon-offset tree plantations may actually result in a loss of biodiversity and decimate otherwise healthy tropical ecosystems.

“Tropical ecosystems offer a wide array of functions and services to society beyond carbon sequestration,” lead author Jesus Aguirre-Guitierrez, a researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, told The Daily Beast. He added, “It is crucial to shift from the narrow focus on carbon and adopt a more holistic perspective if we aim to effectively conserve and restore natural ecosystems.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.