Tree planting has become a favored response to environmental loss. Governments, companies, and philanthropies announce large targets with reassuring round numbers. Forests, after all, store carbon, shelter wildlife, and support livelihoods. Yet the details matter. Planting the wrong species, or planting trees where forests did not exist, can undermine both biodiversity and climate goals. That problem has become clearer as restoration pledges have multiplied. A 2019 commentary in Nature found that nearly half of the area pledged under the Bonn Challenge consisted of plantation-style monocultures. A 2024 study in Science showed that much land promised for reforestation in Africa was actually savanna, an ecosystem poorly suited to trees. Ambition, in other words, has often run ahead of ecological sense. Paul Smith, secretary-general of Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), says this pattern raised concerns as pledges grew larger. “It started to occur to us that there was potentially a problem here, particularly given the size of the pledges that were being made.” What was missing was a way to distinguish restoration that improved biodiversity from restoration that merely looked good on paper. The Global Biodiversity Standard (TGBS) was created to fill that gap, reports Ruth Kamnitzer. Officially launched in 2024, it certifies forest and landscape restoration projects that can demonstrate measurable gains for biodiversity. Unlike many existing certification schemes, it focuses first on ecological outcomes and is designed to be affordable for small projects. Certification under TGBS begins with evidence. Projects are assessed using satellite imagery and on-the-ground surveys, which examine…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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