NEWS
areas than the above-ground carbon
stored in trees.
The bottom line is that putting aban-
doned lands to work again for a liv-
able planet will require considerable
nuance. For instance, instead of simply
paying rural people to do the things
that made sense in the past — graze
livestock on marginal lands — those
subsidies may need to be targeted to
address different concerns in different
places.
It might make sense to pay subsidies,
as the European Union now does,
to preserve the traditional way of life
in areas with a rich cultural heritage,
like Castro Laboreiro, says Emma van
der Zanden of VU University Amster-
dam. But it could also make sense to
stimulate abandonment, for instance,
by subsidizing green projects in other
areas where environmental values pre-
dominate.
In Australia, many marginal and aban-
doned areas could become more
productive if converted to forests for
carbon storage, paid for by fossil fuel-
intensive industries, says David Linden-
mayer, a landscape ecologist at Aus-
tralian National University, Canberra.
Farm income could come partly from
grazing, partly from cropping, and
partly from regeneration, which would
incidentally improve water retention in
those areas. “If you want people to stay
on that land you have to pay them for
the asset, and the asset clearly has to
be carbon storage,” he says. “But our
government refuses to create a mecha-
nism for paying farmers to store car-
bon.”
As he speaks, Lindenmayer looks out
his window at the evidence of Aus-
tralia’s latest prolonged drought, com-
bined with a deadly heatwave, and
massive wildfires that have darkened
skies across much of the country. Aus-
tralia, he warns, is merely “at the lead-
ing edge of the kind of challenges that
are going to arise” for other nations as
warmer and less predictable climate
conditions become more common.
Abandoned lands could help minimize
or even prevent the likely damage. But
that will only happen if scientists and
policymakers come together quickly
on the smartest ways to put those lands
back to work.
Figure 3: Critics note that flawed strategies have encouraged tree farms,
such as this oil palm plantation in Costa Rica. SHUTTERSTOCK
37
Grassroots
Vol 20
No 1
March 2020