Comparative assessment of global wood fiber and forest carbon sequestration prospects

We assessed the relative capacity of key global wood baskets in Latin America and Asia to determine their ability to meet increases in demands for pulp and paper, or to grow trees to store forest carbon. Drawing from the Trillion Trees proposal in 2020, a central aim of the research was to determine if a single country could plant an additional 10 million hectares (ha) by 2030. We analyzed secondary information from publicly available literature about the forest sector, forest plantations, and forest restoration in various countries. We screened land use types from the FAO data base to estimate forest restoration opportunities and compared those results with previous literature. These analyses helped determine the countries in Asia and Latin America with sufficient non-forested land (mainly shrub, herbaceous, or grassland areas) and the right environmental conditions to plant trees to meet the 10 million ha goal, or at least have good potential for large-scale tree planting. The study revealed that Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Indonesia, India, Lao PDR, and Vietnam had the best prospects for large-scale afforestation and reforestation. Cambodia, Chile, Mexico, Myanmar, Paraguay, Thailand, and Uruguay also showed high potential based on the presence of large areas of grassland that might be suitable for tree planting. The research showed that while no single country is likely to plant 10 million ha of forests in the next decade, many could support hundreds of thousands or millions of ha, sufficient to support new pulp and paper mills, solid wood forest manufacturing, or major forest carbon plantings.