A little overlooked fact is that one of the best methods of carbon capture is to ... do nothing! Letting wild plants do their thing, as they did for millions of years, is a way of letting the planet heal itself. Below I set out some stats about the power of wild plants to capture carbon, but first - some context.
Wild spaces have declined dramatically while CO2 in the atmosphere has increased
For context, I refer to Sir David Attenborough's 'A life on our planet'. If you've not seen the film, I highly recommend it. It charts various statistics throughout Sir David's lifespan - most critically comparing the amount of wild space with the level of C02 in the atmosphere.
As you can see from the stats above, the amount of wilderness in the world has between 1937 and 2020 decreased from 66% to 35% - almost half! Meanwhile, the amount of CO2 has increased, almost double. It's incredibly stark. Sir David thinks we have a population problem ... I'm less wedded to this (I think consuming less is a good place to start...). Still, the case he makes for rewilding large swathes of the earth as a way to capture carbon is incredibly compelling.
He also makes a very poignant point, focusing in on Chernobyl - an area rendered lifeless by humans which has now been reinhabited by wild plants and animals. If we don't take action, it will be humans who will be eliminated. Nature will prevail.
Current land use breakdown
While the global level of wild land is close to 35% as per the above stats, the amount in the UK is significantly less. UK Government statistics show that as of April 2022, land in England:
Forestry, open land and water - makes up just 20.1%
developed use - 8.7%
Agriculture - 63.1% (across the UK as a whole, 71% of land is Agriculture ; Livestock and their feed make up 85% of the UK’s total land use for agriculture (WWF))
Residential gardens - 4.9%.
Current benefit of wild spaces
Woods and trees provide a plethora of services and benefits to people. In terms of carbon storage, woodlands in Great Britain together hold 213 million tonnes of carbon (in their living trees) of which ancient and long-established woodlands hold 36% (77 million tonnes), even though they make up only 25% of all woodland (State of Woods and Trees, 2021, Woodland Trust)
Potential benefit of rewilding
Restoring and protecting native woodland, peatlands, heaths and species-rich grasslands over seven million hectares of Britain (30% of our land) could capture and store 53 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. That’s more than 12% of current UK greenhouse gas emissions. For context, agriculture currently accounts for 10% of C02 emissions. (Source, Rewilding Britain)
Concluding thoughts
It seems almost counter intuitive to humans that 'doing nothing' could in fact be a good thing. But wild plants are nature's way of expressing itself, of being. They work in symbiosis with animals, and indeed one reason a lot of our wild spaces still do need 'management' is that we don't have the wild herbivores we once did to stimulate biodiversity (read 'Wilding' by Isabella Tree for more on this!). Nonetheless, it is positive that the Government's new Environmental Land Management scheme is looking at funding nature positive schemes including rewilding (see my 'news' section).
I hope this has an impact and starts to make a difference, before it's too late.
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