A tall order is on the way.
Ireland has pledged to plant 440 million trees by the year 2040. This comes alongside the aim to build 50,000 new energy homes each year. Ireland’s climate action plan sets out to plant 22 million new trees per annum.
This is cool!
Ireland 🇮🇪 wants to plant 400 million trees in next 20 years.
Growing many more trees 🌲 in one of Europe’s most deforested countries. It’s 20 million a year! 👍— Erik Solheim (@ErikSolheim) September 10, 2019
Over this period, the plan is to plant 70 percent conifers and 30 percent broadleaf plants, in an ambitious reforestation target. The initiative also aims to reach one million more zero-emission vehicles by the year 2030, at the rate of 100,000 each year. An overall goal is to reach 2050 completely carbon-free.
Much of this will cover the Irish grassland countryside. This has reportedly upset some farmers who may have to give up some of their lands for targets to be met.
This also follows news that 2,449 would be felled under plans for new bus routes in the city. A petition to prevent the loss of these trees has already gathered almost 15,000 signatures. An effective plan would be required to reincorporate these lost trees to the city if such plans went ahead.
Along with Ireland, other countries have also slowly started moving towards the common goal. China has planted 13.64 billion trees as part of the trillion trees programme.
In 2016, India even managed to plant over 66 million trees across twelve hours. Given that India is approximately 47 times larger than us, it would take some beating from us! It’s safe to say that, compared to this, Ireland has managed expectations while keeping a similar level of ambition.
With these fresh and ambitious targets to be hit, Ireland could be about to become a whole lot greener. We didn’t know that was possible, but we were born ready for it.