On The Radar: Tree planting projects in Asia
12 June 2023
Earlier this year, Singapore announced a milestone in its plan to plant one million trees by 2030.
Since the OneMillionTrees Movement was launched in April 2020, Singapore has pulled ahead of schedule with more than 540,000 trees now planted and growing.
OneMillionTrees is an ambitious project but, according to officials, is meant to increase biodiversity and “restore nature back into our city”.
Environmentalism is at the core of massive planting projects like this. Trees absorb and store CO2, making planting at a large scale “among the most effective strategies for climate change mitigation” according to research published in Science.
Alongside this, these projects have ‘co-benefits’ - promoting biodiversity, protecting native ecosystems, regulating water cycles, and improving health and wellbeing to mention a few.
Given all the potential benefits, Singapore is not alone in Asia when it comes to tree planting. For example, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines have all embarked on major missions to restore land through tree planting, aiming for a combined total of 47.5 million hectares. In 2022, China announced plans to plant 70 billion trees by 2030 as a way to fight deforestation and climate change.
However, while the idea behind these projects is sound, recent reporting shows there are a number of hidden hazards on the path to creating these massive green spaces.
In a study published last year, researchers found that tree-planting projects across Asia lack seed diversity. A limited number of species are planted – often exotic species and not native – which are often selected for how easy it is to get seeds and for how fast they grow. However, this can have a negative impact on biodiversity and work out poorly in the long term, as the environment would recover better with a diversity of native species.
To make these projects work, researchers suggest looking to local communities to help with planting – build on seed networks that already exist and draw on expertise in the area to plant and curate the best possible ecosystem.
- Asia Media Centre
