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Opportunities for biodiversity gains under the world’s largest reforestation programme
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Journal Article
Opportunities for biodiversity gains under the world’s largest reforestation programme
2016
Overview
Reforestation is a critical means of addressing the environmental and social problems of deforestation. China’s Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP) is the world’s largest reforestation scheme. Here we provide the first nationwide assessment of the tree composition of GFGP forests and the first combined ecological and economic study aimed at understanding GFGP’s biodiversity implications. Across China, GFGP forests are overwhelmingly monocultures or compositionally simple mixed forests. Focusing on birds and bees in Sichuan Province, we find that GFGP reforestation results in modest gains (via mixed forest) and losses (via monocultures) of bird diversity, along with major losses of bee diversity. Moreover, all current modes of GFGP reforestation fall short of restoring biodiversity to levels approximating native forests. However, even within existing modes of reforestation, GFGP can achieve greater biodiversity gains by promoting mixed forests over monocultures; doing so is unlikely to entail major opportunity costs or pose unforeseen economic risks to households.
China’s Grain for Green Program is the world’s largest reforestation program, encompassing tens of millions of hectares since 1999. Here, Hua
et al
. show that the majority of areas have been reforested with tree monocultures, but that planting mixed forests could increase animal biodiversity without imposing additional economic costs.
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
Subject
