A new LMU study shows: Three-quarters of the estimated global potential for new forests to capture CO₂ is threatened by significant social and institutional challenges.
Planting trees is often seen as a simple way to fight climate change. Across the world, efforts to create new forests (afforestation) and restore lost ones (reforestation) have helped expand forest cover by more than 300 million hectares so far. Over the past decade, afforestation and reforestation have been estimated to remove around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere each year—roughly equivalent to the annual fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions across the entire European Union. Despite this, large-scale forestation competes for land with food production and livelihoods, and its success depends on secure land rights and institutions that can support and protect projects over time.
How social circumstances limit reforestation
A new study led by LMU geographer Wenkai Bao presents that around three-quarters previously estimated potentials for removing CO₂ through afforestation and reforestation could face major social and institutional barriers.
Bringing together expertise from the natural and social sciences, the LMU team combined evidence from real-world case studies with machine-learning analysis of extensive global datasets. The study, published in One Earth, provides a global assessment of how social, institutional, and economic conditions limit afforestation and reforestation efforts—and what these challenges mean for future carbon dioxide removal.
The findings show that poverty, food insecurity, insecure land rights, and weak governance are among the biggest constraints to afforestation and reforestation worldwide. Limited forestry infrastructure and a lack of support from local stakeholders also make it harder to establish and maintain forests over the long term.
While planting and maintaining forests faces fewer social and institutional barriers in Europe and China, these hurdles are significantly greater across Africa, as well as in India or Brazil.
Successful climate action must combine environmental and social measures
“Because much of the estimated potential lies in places facing these constraints, especially in tropical countries, credible climate strategies must pair afforestation and reforestation with efforts that strengthen livelihoods, rights, and institutions.” explains Wenkai Bao. Ignoring these social and institutional conditions can lead to failed plantings, less or less permanent carbon, conflict, or greater hardship for poor communities.
Julia Pongratz, Professor of Physical Geography and Land Use Systems at LMU and co-author, adds: “To reach greenhouse gas neutrality, we will have to at least triple the global amount of CO2 that we remove from the atmosphere by 2050. Additional forest cover will play the dominating role while we scale up technological removal options. It is thus fundamental to understand — and eventually resolve — constraints to creating and keeping up these forests. It should be clearly stated, however, that planting forests can only complement—not replace—broader climate action and sustainable development.”