"We'll Just Plant Trees!" - How Phantom Forests Are The Newest, Coolest Greenwashing Brush
Dr Jurgenne Primavera is being paddled in a canoe along the coast of Iloilo in the Philippines. It's an idyllic scene but she is frowning. Six years ago these shallow waters were planted with mangroves as part of the country's ambitious National Greening Programme, but now there is nothing to see but blue water and blue sky.
Ninety per cent of the seedlings died, Dr Primavera says, because the type of mangrove planted was suited to muddy creeks rather than this sandy coastal area. The government preferred it, she suggests, because it is readily available and easy to plant. "Science was sacrificed for convenience in the planting." The National Greening Programme was an attempt to grow 1.5 million hectares of forest and mangroves between 2011 and 2019 but a withering report from the country's Commission on Audit found that in the first five years 88% of it had failed.
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The Indian State of Uttar Pradesh, for example, has planted tens of millions of saplings in the last five years, but when the BBC went to check new plantations near Banda, it found few alive. Signs still proudly announced the plantations' existence, but scrubland plants were taking over. "These plantations are mostly photo-ops, they look great, the numbers sound stupendous," says Ashwini Chhatre, an associate professor with Indian School of Business, who has researched ecosystem restoration. "The current model of plantation requires you to first have nurseries for which you need to procure building materials and then you need to procure sapling bags, barbed wire and other things needed for the plantation and then transportation of everything. "Contracts are awarded for the supply of all these materials, which can also be very leaky. And so many of these people are interested in replanting, they are not interested in the success of plantation."
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The BBC found a different kind of problem in Mozambique, which has allowed private companies to plant large monoculture plantations as part of its contribution to the AFR100 forest landscape restoration initiative. While many plantations have grown successfully, it's alleged that in some cases mature natural forest has been felled to make space. The BBC heard this complaint from villagers in the Lugela, Ile and Namarroi districts in the centre of the country. It is echoed by Vanessa Cabanelas of the NGO, Justica Ambiental, who says that the original landscape worked better as a carbon sink. "The idea of plantation is sold to us as mitigation for climate change impacts, which is false," she says.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61300708