Australia has spent almost AUD$62m ($42.3m) on a scheme to plant 20 million trees and has committed over AUD$1.5bn of taxpayer money to climate change projects involving planting or habitat conservation since 2015. However, the country has simultaneously increased land-clearing programmes in a number of states, bulldozing hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, primarily for agriculture. Just over two years of such land clearance will cancel out public spending on efforts to prevent 1,189 hectares of CO2 entering the atmosphere. Gains from several years’ worth of tree planting will be eradicated in six months’ worth of land clearance.
Australia has spent almost AUD$62m ($42.3m) on a scheme to plant 20 million trees and has committed over AUD$1.5bn of taxpayer money to climate change projects involving planting or habitat conservation since 2015. However, the country has simultaneously increased land-clearing programmes in a number of states, bulldozing hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, primarily for agriculture. Just over two years of such land clearance will cancel out public spending on efforts to prevent 125 million tonnes of CO2 entering the atmosphere. Gains from several years’ worth of tree planting will be eradicated in six months’ worth of land clearance.