The aim of my research project is to investigate and improve the assessment of afforestation as a greenhouse gas removal 'technology', using the UK and Portugal as comparative case studies. Large-scale afforestation is one of several options proposed by the IPCC to reach the Paris Agreement's target of 'well below' 2C above pre-industrial levels. However, in contrast to other greenhouse gas removal approaches, public involvement with afforestation is deep, longstanding and rich: as an ancient human practice, it is difficult to call tree planting an 'emerging technology'.
The need to balance competing claims for land-use change will become increasingly prominent over the next 50 years. Implementing afforestation on a large scale will affect land systems, ecosystems, agriculture, biodiversity, livelihoods, socio-economy and culture. These effects are difficult to capture within current assessments. Figuring out how to make evidence-based, equitable, balanced, socially acceptable decisions in this highly negotiated space is a crucial task for the social sciences.
Recent research has identified 'responsible assessment' of land-based climate mitigation options as a key gap needing further investigation. However, to date, there have been very few social science studies on afforestation as an option for greenhouse gas reduction. Further research is vital to advance principles for responsible assessments of afforestation for climate mitigation and to investigate the potential challenges and opportunities for integrating public and socio-technical or policy discourses. Conventional approaches to public knowledge around emerging technology tend to assume the need to 'educate'. This project approaches from the opposite direction, positing that expert institutions need to listen better to, and act on, public knowledges and values that already exist. Inclusion is a key dimension of responsible assessment, but this work also intends to advance understanding of 'institutional reflexivity': institutions reflecting on their own norms and practices.
The UK is among the least densely forested countries in Europe, but national attention has been given to different greenhouse gas reduction technologies (including large-scale afforestation) via the current UKRI-funded Greenhouse Gas Reduction Research Programme, which provides a timely opportunity to investigate this research area. Portugal serves as an interesting comparator, as one of the most densely forested countries in Europe, and with some large-scale afforestation projects already happening. However, with large plantations of non-native eucalyptus, massive forest fires every year since 2017 and a high awareness of climate change issues, public groups and policymakers may have a different set of perspectives and priorities than in the UK.
Creating realisable pathways to decarbonisation, while delivering other land-based targets will require new, responsible appraisals of the options, which are both wide-ranging and in-depth. This project will map the existing sciencepolicy and public interfaces with afforestation and will use these insights to study and advance responsible assessments of afforestation for greenhouse gas removal. With a basis in science and technology studies and drawing on constructivist understandings of the environmental science-policymaking interface, the objective is to generate pragmatic, detailed recommendations for including public groups in future climate policy assessment processes, and for increasing the reflexivity of relevant institutions. A key output will be a set of guidelines for responsible assessment of afforestation as a greenhouse gas removal technology. The results of this pressing research have potentially a large practical contribution for policymakers, scientists and publics alike, as countries struggle to reconcile their societal and economic trajectories - and their multiple perspectives - with global warming targets of 'well below' 2C.