[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Tree_Tsunami
[2] http://www.radio.gov.pk/04-07-2019/pms-vision-of-clean-green...
You can actually make small but stable profit from buying land and converting into forest.
> Priority will be given to those who intend to plant a forest in the so-called ecological corridors, in areas threatened by water erosion, in areas adjacent to inland waters and forests, in areas with a slope of more than 12 degrees. Also, those who have land for afforestation in voivodships with a forest cover of less than 30% will get points. Depending on the species composition of the crop and the previously mentioned criteria, the amount of support can range from PLN 4,984 to PLN 7,624 per hectare. In addition, payment is possible for fencing of crops.
Link in Polish: http://www.lasy.gov.pl/pl/informacje/aktualnosci/jak-zdobyc-...
And I believe other EU countries run similar schemes.
Also planting a forrest - as an ecological system - is better to just planting a tree, I think.
Forrest area in Poland is growing since WWII from 20,8% in 1946 to 29,5% in 2016. The target for 2020 is 30% area of the country under forrest and for 2050 - 33%. 80% of forrests in Poland is under management of Lasy Panstwowe - state-owned company with political reach.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Pro...
[2] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/china-great-gree...
When you can get citizens to consistently try to solve the problem on the level they can control, then you aren't going to be able to consistently get governments to do it either. The options left are to use educational methods to convince the citizens otherwise or go with options that do not require action level buy in from the majority.
Sometimes the things a person can individually do don't work and they need to act in concert to make a difference. Fire control, transportation, defense... health care? Mitigating environmental catastrophe?
I suspect the same will happen with climate change once it changes enough. The problem is that by the time directly impacting people enough to convince them of the need for action, the ability to resolve the problem will be outside our scope to control. Much in the same way a few cities had to burn to set an example for others. Which leads us to the other problem, we only have one 'city' to burn.
If we try to solve climate change the same way that we solved fire services being seen as a common sense government action, it will work but only after the city is burning.
Redwood trees (as an example) are relatively fire safe. At the opposite end Eucalyptus trees are fire hazards.
So - plant a fire resilient forest appropriate for your climate.
If we consider countries with more population are going to plant more (so trees per capita perhaps). We could go with landmass but it takes money/people to do this, so let's go with capita.
Pakistan being a highly populated country and so needs to plan more than the 5bn average (they did 10).
But there is a very long tail of small countries in that list of 200 so many more small countries. Most will go below the average needed and so won't stack up.
If the government doesn't have that much viable tree-planting space available then they either have to seize it which would make some people very unhappy, or compulsorily purchase it which would push the cost up a lot. That isn't a reason not to do it, but in order to talk about it you need to be clear about what you're actually talking about.
Actually, I should have been more clear - this is just the money coming out of the government budget. Some unspecified amount of money is coming from private-public partnerships and from donations. The trees are being planted on deforested public land, or just private land where the owners are happy to have forests/trees up, or in public urban spaces. Pakistan has already been hit very hard by climate change - for example by multiple catastrophic floods in the past two decades. There is a lot of public support for this venture.
Also, just advertisement and information campaign aimed at getting people to plant trees in rural areas as an investment in their children's future would encourage more planting as well.
We absolutely do need to know what we're talking about. For example, the seize-or-purchase dichotomy is a false one. The article mentions, for example:
> But although tree planting on such a colossal scale faces significant challenges (not least identifying who owns the land in question, and securing the rights to plant and maintain trees there), widespread efforts are already underway. [Italics mine.]
In other words, the government doesn't have to seize or purchase the land. They are after a specific right, which we could even imaging being structured, where appropriate, as a subsidized service that owners of degraded land might clamor to receive.
We could almost even suppose that the people who are presenting these figures have take these things into account, at least tentatively.
Also, by making it a socially distributed action. To make people relearn, take part, take ownership, spend more time out.. it could probably cost less.
Can I add this to the HN Weekend Projects list next to Dropbox, Facebook, and Twitter?