While planting (trillions of) trees could help us absorb more CO2, are there real risks to this human intervention in nature’s biodiversity? Won’t our “trees of choice” be wildly different from what would grow naturally? Can we even measure/foresee the longterm impact of planting trillions of trees ourselves?
In: Biology
In the most general sense of the word “risk”, then yes there is always a degree of risk in pretty much any activity (human or otherwise). The term “real risk” has insufficient precision to give any sort of answer but a lot of it would depend on how things were done.
Generally speaking, if it is plainly reforestation, then the most likely candidate would be some kind of local species. Of course, if the idea is to replant an area like a desert (where there might not be anything local) then the people behind it would very likely choose something that is “local enough” but still be able to grow.
There will be some consequence to this (clearly for CO2, if successful) and some might not be totally foreseeable. But then again, nothing done on a large enough scale will be without some degree of uncertainty. Still, trees don’t grow overnight and there will be a fair amount of time (decades at a minimum) to collect relevant data and adjust to the situation.
It is almost inconceivable that any effort would be so concentrated that there would be major effects. We are, as a species after all, burning down or deforesting at a huge rate today. Any sort of replanting would be spread out in many locations (that were likely forested a few centuries ago) so there would be little chance of it a huge negative consequence.
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