The ‘Ghost Forests’ Used by Companies in Misleading Environmental Marketing


BBC Brasil, Navin Singh Khadka in 04/05/2022
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“Carbon capture through increased forest cover has become a key strategy in the fight against climate change. In addition, the maintenance of forests and recovery of degraded vegetation has also become an important source of income and has received investments from governments and entrepreneurs.

However, the model faces difficulties: contracted or planned forests often exist only on paper — either because promises have not been kept or because the planted trees have died or been removed. With the difficulty of monitoring progress and targets of reforestation and preservation projects with extremely long timeframes, much criticism and debate arises about the effectiveness of these programmes.

In the case of the 20X20 Initiative, for example, participants report that measures have been taken to protect and restore more than 22 million hectares, but an expert with knowledge of the project told the BBC that less than 10% of that number has actually been restored by 2020.”


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