22 million trees a year, 1 million electric cars by 2030 and energy upgrades for 50,000 homes a year: this is Ireland's Climate Action Plan for the next 20 years.
Ireland will plant 22 million trees a year until 2040, for a total of 440 million new trees. Through this planting programme, the government aims to gradually reduce CO2 emissions until reaching the zero-emissions target by 2050. But that is not all: there will also be greenhouse gas emission taxes (carbon tax), investment in renewables and an approach to agricultural management that mitigates climate change. This is what Dublin's Climate Action Plan sets out.
According to Ireland's plan, reforestation and afforestation activities must provide, for every hectare, a split of approximately 70 per cent new forest destined for conifers and 30 per cent for broadleaf trees — specifically, 2,500 conifers or 3,300 broadleaf trees per reforested hectare.
In addition to the reforestation project, the Irish Climate Action Plan provides for energy efficiency upgrades to 50,000 homes every year, while on mobility, it aims to expand the fleet of electric or zero-emission vehicles by 100,000 units annually, so as to reach 1 million electric cars by 2030.
"Taking decisive action to address climate disruption will be a great challenge for every dimension of our society, but the benefits are enormous: warmer homes, cleaner air, sustainable use of the world's scarce resources, more connected communities, authentic values and quality jobs in businesses that can compete in a decarbonised world," reads the document presented by the Department of Agriculture.
Ireland's major reforestation project has not pleased everyone — farmers in particular, who will apparently have to give up part of their land in order to reach the target of 440 million trees over the next 20 years. But Dublin is pressing ahead without hesitation, bolstered by the publication of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations intergovernmental body on climate change, according to which agriculture and land management play a fundamental role in countering the climate crisis.
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Many other countries have launched reforestation projects. In Ethiopia, more than 350 million trees were planted in a single day as part of a national effort to combat deforestation and global warming. India did something similar in 2016, when 50 million trees were planted in a single day. China, through The Trillion Tree Campaign, has planted 13.62 billion trees and had to deploy up to 60,000 soldiers to manage the planting of all those trees, while Australia has funded a project that will enable the planting of over a billion trees by 2050, with the aim of absorbing 18 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Milan, as part of the ForestaMi project, will create an urban forest with 3 million trees by 2030.
