Tree planting at COP31 cannot yet match forest loss, report says

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and UN Secretary-General António Guterres planted olive trees at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya on Wednesday, as a report presented there warned that global forest loss continues to outpace planting in several countries.

The annual Global Carbon Budget report estimates that permanent deforestation added an average of 3.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year in recent years — just under a tenth of total global emissions.

Reforestation and new tree planting could offset between half and two-thirds of those emissions, the report says. China leads in planting, while Europe and the United States are also planting more trees than they are losing. Brazil has not yet achieved that balance, and forest loss still exceeds gains in Russia and Indonesia, according to the report.