{"id":12172,"date":"2021-02-17T13:50:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T10:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=12172"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:25","slug":"scaling-up-reforestation-can-help-us-manage-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2021\/02\/17\/scaling-up-reforestation-can-help-us-manage-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaling up reforestation can help us manage climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Climate change is accelerating, yet it isn\u2019t too late yet to keep warming to under 1.5 Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement, by the end of the century. This is according to the British-Dutch gas company Shell, which has set out its\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shell.com\/energy-and-innovation\/the-energy-future\/scenarios\/the-energy-transformation-scenarios.html#iframe=L3dlYmFwcHMvU2NlbmFyaW9zX2xvbmdfaG9yaXpvbnMv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">energy transformation scenarios<\/a>\u00a0to help us keep climate change manageable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The current Covid-19 crisis has opened up new possibilities for action by \u201cshift[ing] policy and behaviour in ways that open new possibilities for the future,\u201d Shell says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The multinational company is advocating \u201cextensive scale-up of nature-based solutions,\u201d which should include planting trees over an area the size of Brazil to soak up carbon from the atmosphere.&nbsp;\u201c[S]ome 700m hectares of land would be required over the century, an area approaching that of Brazil,\u201d the company explains in one of the scenarios it has mapped out about climate change mitigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, we should strive to reduce our carbon emissions to net zero through our embrace of renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar. Yet without land-based carbon sinks like forests, that won\u2019t suffice to help us heal the planet, the company\u2019s CEO, Ben van Beurden, stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s not what some people sometimes think: we\u2019ll just do a little bit more solar, a bit more wind and we\u2019ll get there,\u201d van Beurden&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2018\/oct\/09\/shell-ben-van-beurden-mass-reforestation-un-climate-change-target\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a>. \u201cYou can get to 1.5C, but not by just by pulling the same levers a little bit harder, because they are being pulled roughly as fast and as hard as we are currently imagining. What we think can be done is massive reforestation. Think of another Brazil in terms of rainforest: you can get to 1.5C.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shell first floated the idea of large-scale reforestation more than two years ago in line with a recommendation by the UN\u2019s intergovernmental panel on climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then as now planting trees on that scale remains an ambitious goal, especially since actual forests in Brazil\u2019s Amazon region are being cut down constantly. In just a half century nearly a fifth of the Amazon\u2019s forested area has been lost to cattle ranching and other forms of land conversion. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sustainability-times.com\/environmental-protection\/scaling-up-reforestation-can-help-us-manage-climate-change\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Climate change is accelerating, yet it isn\u2019t too late yet to keep warming to under 1.5 Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement, by the end of the century. This is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}