As Forests React to Climate Change, Can Genetically Modified Trees Stand in the Gap?
Christian Yonker’s April 17, 2023, Article, As Forests React to Climate Change, Can Genetically Modified Trees Stand in the Gap? first appeared on the Sustainable Brands website.
The article discusses biotech startup Living Carbon, which has developed a GE hybrid poplar tree. The company claims the trees have enhanced photosynthesis abilities, allowing the trees to grow faster and trap more carbon than non-engineered poplar tree (As of April 17, 2023, there are no peer-reviewed study to back up these claims).
The following are excerpts from the article, which can be read in full on the Sustainable Brands website.
The forest for the trees: Biodiversity vs carbon
Accelerated carbon absorption, disease resistance, boosted yield — GMOs are often designed to fit a particular purpose and not necessarily the holistic needs of the host ecosystem. Crops didn’t need to be, because of their nature as monocrops. Trees, however, are in the wild; and any manipulation of their genome must balance the overall needs of the local ecological community.
In the case of trees, how do we balance ecological and social benefits with the need to draw carbon out of the atmosphere?
“I don’t think the two are in conflict with each other, as long as you’re being honest with what will actually store carbon,” said Anne Petermann, co-founder and coordinator of the STOP GE Trees Campaign. “What’s best for communities and the environment is what’s best for the climate.”
Focusing on amassing individual trees for sequestration misses the forest for the trees by overlooking the way species interact with each other as well as boosting ecological services, diversity and net carbon sequestration throughout the ecosystem. Viewing trees simply as a way to balance the carbon budget, Petermann says, is a grossly inaccurate view of how natural systems sequester carbon.
“We need an all-hands-on-deck approach; and we need to sequester a lot of carbon, like, today — but not at the expense of other things,” Pete Smith, urban forestry manager at the Arbor Day Foundation, told Sustainable Brands. “If one [solution] comes at the expense of another, it becomes a race to the bottom and not an exercise on how we solve the greatest issues facing our day.”
Both Petermann and Smith are critical of any carbon-sequestration project that comes at the expense of social justice and biodiversity. Petermann sees GE trees as yet another enabler of the status quo — a way to draw down carbon faster in order to sell carbon credits faster in order to “offset” ballooning emissions.
