Afforestation & Reforestation

Promises

Afforestation refers to planting forests upon land where forests have not historically occurred, while Reforestation refers to restoring forests upon deforested land.
Forestry is an intervention with a long tradition, it seems safe and reliable.
Afforestation and reforestation could remove between 0.5-10 gt CO2 per year, at cost estimates ranging from $US 0-240 per ton of CO2 removed, with implementation costs closest to zero in more favourable locations.

Risks to forests affecting the permanence of carbon removal are wildfires and diseases.
Existing inequalities produced by current economic paradigms might worsen. Ignoring problematic approaches to economic development runs the risk of re-creating issues when deploying environmental or social “solutions” to climate change.

Afforestation and reforestation can improve biodiversity, but at the same time, replacing the old forest and then planting more carbon efficient trees may reduce the biodiversity.
Carbon capture and storage techniques require big amounts of land, and this may create land pressures for people who are now using it for their own agriculture or for their own subsistence. This could result in a form of neo-colonialism where we compensate for our own emissions by pushing people off their lands far away.
The main beneficiaries of land use have historically been large companies who have been using land grabbing techniques to dispossess smaller communities of their own lands.
Any Climate Engineering technique requiring land use will have to reckon with the associated political economy of land-grabbing, dispossession, ecologically devastating monocultures, and perverse incentives for cutting down old growth forests to allow for reforestation.