WHY OLD FOREST'S ARE BETTER

 Ethiopia is a poor country, yet last year the government of Ethiopia organised a huge conservation programme . In just one day the people of Ethiopia planted 350 million trees. It was an amazing achievement to plant millions of trees to fight de-forestation and climate change. However in the environmental world things which seem great often have a dark side.  This work was carried out with money supplied by western Governments, to plant trees at a low cost as a high impact solution to climate change, because trees have enormous potential to soak up and store carbon. Ethiopia was just one of forty third world nations who signed up to initiatives like the Bonn Challenge whose aim is to restore 350 million Hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030. The forty nations who signed up all received payments to plant the trees. Now here's the problem 80% of the trees planted by these country's are either in a plantation full of one species or in a limited number of trees, that produce fruit or rubber. In Chile for example Landowners ripped up and cut down forests full of native trees replaced them with new tree plantations because of the tax cuts and grants being given out by the UN and Western Governments. Native forests full of different species and trees of old age are rich in biodiversity and store much more carbon then newly planted forests. its mind boggling that millions of pounds of aid to fight de forestation is being wasted because no one in charge of handing out the grants understands this. So my point is it is better to preserve our old forests then plant a new one, if we are serious about  stopping pollution .