Ireland to Plant 440 Million Trees in 20 Years

The 84,431-square-kilometer country is determined to fight climate change by planting 440 million trees by 2040; 70 percent will be conifers and the remainder broad-leaf. The initiative is part of Ireland’s larger goal to become carbon-neutral by 2050. Ireland has the lowest forest cover of all European countries — about 11 percent compared to an average of more than 30 percent. 

The announcement comes about two months after a study found that planting more than 500 billion trees was the “most effective” climate change solution available.

Still, other countries have embraced tree-planting initiatives. Ethiopia planted a record 350 million trees in a single day in July. Scotland announced this year that it had surpassed its own tree-planting goals. It had planted 11,200 hectares (approximately 43 square miles) of trees in 2018, a boost on its 10,000 hectare (approximately 39 square mile) goal. The final tally was more than 22 million trees planted.

In order to make the tree planting initiative work, Ireland needs farmers to plant more trees on their properties. The Irish Times reports that 22 million trees will be planted every year over the next two decades for a total of 440 million new trees by 2040. In June the government published a climate action plan proposing the planting of 8,000 hectares (19,768 acres) every year, it failed to go into detail about the type and number of trees.

Current estimates reveal that about 15 billion trees are cut down on Earth every year by humans. Ireland specifically has seen major loss of forest cover. The country went from having a forest cover of 80 percent to just one percent in 1929. The country has taken steps to rectify this and has been able to grow the area of forest to 10.5 percent of the land area but still falls short of the European average of over 30 percent.

Also proposed under the plan, is a massive increase of electric vehicles (EVs), up by an average of 100,000 annually over the next decade, to reach almost one million EVs by 2030.  Some 50,000 homes will need to undergo deep retrofits each year to meet the the plan’s targets.

Other countries in the past few years have made similar bold steps to replace the massive deforestation the world has faced in the last 100 years. Earlier this year Ethiopia broken the tree-planting record when it planted 350 million trees in 12 hours.