The ‘ghost forests’ used by companies in misleading environmental marketing

Carbon capture through increased forest cover has become a key strategy in the fight against climate change. But there is a problem.

Sometimes these forests only exist on paper — either because promises have not been kept or because the trees planted have died or even been felled. Now, a new effort is being made to monitor these practices.

Scientist Juurgenne Primavera is in a canoe off the coast of Iloilo, Philippines. The scene is idyllic, but she has a worried look on her face.

Six years ago these shallow waters were seeded with mangroves as part of the country’s ambitious National Greening Program, but now there’s nothing in sight but blue water and blue skies.

Primavera says that 90% of the seedlings planted here died because the type of plant was better suited to muddy streams than to this sandy coastal area.

Still, the government opted for these seedlings, according to the scientist, because they are easier to plant and more abundant.

“Science has been sacrificed in the name of planting convenience.”

The National Greening Program was an attempt to cultivate 1.5 million hectares of forests and mangroves between 2011 and 2019, but a report by the country’s Audit Commission revealed that in the program’s first five years, 88% of the targets failed.

In recent years, many ambitious forest restoration and planting programs have been launched, including the Bonn Challenge to restore 350 million hectares of deforested and degraded landscape worldwide and the Trillion Trees initiative to conserve and cultivate one trillion trees before end of the decade.

There are also regional projects such as the 20X20 Initiative for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Great Green Wall in Sub-Saharan Africa and the AFR100 program covering the continent as a whole.

uncertain progress

While these projects have until 2030 to reach their goals, there is still a long way to go. In some cases, it is simply not known how much progress has been made.

The Bonn Challenge has a “thermometer” to track developments, but only six countries have provided the necessary data.

Asked whether the 2020 Bonn Challenge target of restoring 150 million hectares has been met, the program director said the target may have been met but that “progress has not been fully documented”.

In the case of the 20X20 Initiative, participants report that steps have been taken to protect and restore more than 22 million hectares, but an expert with knowledge of the project told the BBC that less than 10% of that number has actually been restored by 2020.

AFR100 did not respond to the BBC’s question of what has been achieved so far, but the World Resources Institute, which provides technical assistance to the program, said it does not know how much restoration is taking place. The entity plans to start using satellite technology to find out.

In the case of the Great Green Wall, participating countries reported that 20 million hectares of land have been restored since 2009, which corresponds to 20% of the target, but this figure has not been independently verified.

Tim Christophersen, until this month head of Nature for Climate at the United Nations Environment Programme, says that of the billion hectares of landscape that countries have pledged to restore around the world, “most” remain a promise rather than a reality. .

In some cases, grandiose planting programs have even advanced, but have still produced limited results. The BBC investigated a dozen examples that failed — such as the one cited in the Philippines — usually because not enough care was taken.

The Philippine government did not respond to BBC requests for comment on the Audit Commission’s official assessment that 88% of the National Greening Program failed.

The local authority who planted what Primavera considers to be the wrong plant species for coastal sites disputed the claim, saying that 50% of the seedlings survived in some locations.

In the Philippines, there was at least one audit; in many other countries the results are unclear.

The state of Uttar Pradesh, India, for example, has planted tens of millions of seedlings in the last five years, but when the BBC checked new plantings near the city of Banda, it found few alive.

The signs still proudly announced the plantations’ existence, but the savannah plants were slowly taking over.

“These plantations are basically photo montages, they look great, the numbers sound stupendous,” says Ashwini Chhatre, an associate professor at the Indian School of Business who has researched ecosystem restoration.

“The current plantation model requires that you first have nurseries for which you need to purchase building materials and then you need to purchase seedling bags, barbed wire and other things necessary for planting and then transport everything. Contracts are made for the supplying all these materials, which can also be very suspect. And many of these people are only interested in replanting, not interested in planting success.”

Uttar Pradesh state forestry director Mamta Dubey told the BBC that all supplies for state nurseries were purchased through official government channels at competitive prices and that most plantations were reviewed and approved by third parties.

failed plantation

Professor Ashish Aggarwal of the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow says India has replanted an area the size of Denmark since the 1990s, but national surveys show that forest cover is only gradually increasing.

“Even with a 50% survival rate, we should have seen more than 20 million hectares of trees and forests,” he says. “But that didn’t happen — the data doesn’t show that increase.”

According to the deputy director of the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), Tina Vahanen, the problem is widespread, and is not limited to India.

“Many of the plantations were marketing efforts,” she says, “with no follow-up action that is really necessary for growing trees.”

The BBC encountered a different problem in Mozambique, which allowed private companies to plant large monoculture plantations as part of their contribution to the AFR100 forest landscape restoration initiative.

While many plantations have grown successfully, it is claimed that in some cases native forest has been cleared to make room.

The BBC heard this complaint from residents of Lugela, Ile and Namarroi districts, in the center of the country. The same was said by Vanessa Cabanelas, from the NGO Justiça Ambiental, who claims that the original landscape was more efficient in capturing carbon.

“The idea of ​​planting is sold to us as mitigating the impacts of climate change, which is false,” she says.

The companies behind the plantations seen by the BBC have denied that the land had standing forest before. Mozambique Holdings said its rubber plantation near Lugela was placed on a former tea-growing property.

Portucel, a Portuguese company that has a eucalyptus plantation near Namarroi, said the landscape had been degraded by human interference and that few traces of natural forest remained.

The BBC also witnessed the harvest of a Portucel eucalyptus plantation. Vanessa Cabanelas points out that cutting generates emissions, as does transport when the logs are exported, and that dead trees are no longer sequestering carbon.

A spokesperson for Portucel said that new eucalyptus trees will be planted and that the carbon sequestration process will restart.

Portucel received funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a branch of the World Bank, which did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

The Mozambican government also did not respond to the request.

It is in this context that FAO this week presents a new framework for monitoring landscape restoration projects.

National Forest Monitoring Team Leader Julian Fox says 20 indicators have been agreed with governments and other partner organizations. This includes looking at the benefits that forests bring to local communities, which are vital in this effort.

“The idea is to build countries’ capacities to measure and report their progress in a meaningful and transparent way,” he says. “It’s mainly about making your good monitoring data available to the international community.”

The task of collecting the data still rests with the countries and there is no guarantee that they will do the job.

But fortunately, this new effort coincides with improvements in satellite monitoring systems, experts say.

“There’s a lot of greenwashing [algo como “lavagem verde”, expressão que indica forjar uma aparência ambientalmente correta em produtos e ações] out there and we have to actively figure it out,” says Tim Christophersen. “There’s a temptation to greenwashing because it costs less than doing the right thing.”