A win-win strategy: wake plantations up
By xinlei Guo
Natural forest plays a crucial role in global forest restoration and is even proved to be 40 times better than plantation at carbon storage (see S. L. Lewis et al. Nature 568, 25–28; 2019), but long-term natural regeneration will decrease small farmers’ income. Waking plantations up could be a better alternative to support natural restoration and socioeconomic development.
Boosting plantation biodiversity to underpin global deforestation recovery. For example, building up mixed buffer zones which contain native species at the boundary of plantations may increase forest biodiversity and encourage the incorporation of plantations in the local landscape (P. Pozo et al. Forests. 9 (10). 614; 2018).
Increasing forest production to raise farmers’ income. With the green purchase methods, farmers in semiarid China escape the poverty trap, for example (S. Cao et al. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 37 (7); 2017).
Combining top-down global ambitions and bottom-up local needs, I think waking plantations up could better contribute to SDG1 ‘No poverty’ and SDG13 ‘Climate action’ (see go.nature.com/2kwtxsy).
Attachment: A_win-win_strategy_wake_plantations_up.pdf (86 KB)
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