Yes, India and China may be "greener". But, as the referenced article [0] states: <i>The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%).</i> <i>Main</i> driver for greening according to the authors is an increase in food production.<p>It is not re-forestation as the Forbes' author wants readers to think: <i>Both China and India went through phases of large scale deforestation in the 1970s and 80s, clearing old growth forests for urban development, farming and agriculture. However, it is clear that when presented with a problem, humans are incredibly adept at finding a solution.</i><p>The hubris!<p>This means we actually observe net <i>deforestation</i>, globally, but <i>also</i> in China [1] and India [2] if you look at tree coverage indicators from Global Forest Watch. Global Forest Watch also uses satellite images, from a very similar timeline, so it should be comparable and raise serious doubts on the positive message of the Forbes article. To preserve biodiversity and combat climate change, we need more forests, not just more "green" land.<p>[0] Nature article: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7</a><p>[1] China Forest Watch map: <a href="http://bit.ly/2HGOXtI" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/2HGOXtI</a><p>[2] India Forest Watch map: <a href="http://bit.ly/2qT4e0g" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/2qT4e0g</a><p>(edits to improve formatting)
<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an...</a><p>This NASA article points something out that is missing from the Forbes article based on the same research: 82% of increased greening in India and 32% in China is due to intense agricultural activity — harvesting multiple crops per year. This does not increase biomass as much as by reforestation. Forests support rich ecosystems and do not use up groundwater unlike intensive farming.
These kind of article raises more questions than answers. Leaving aside politics on this, I need to know more.<p>How does this "greening" help? Is it more due to agriculture or forests? If it's due to agriculture, what are the unintended consequences?<p>While this article is positive in its tone (which I appreciate) I can't help but feel that it's shallow. It's green so yayy! But what comes next? Increased greenery due to agriculture can probably never have the same positive effects as a forest, at least for the surrounding ecology and biome.
This is a good counter-argument with some evidence that China and India are not the toxic hell hole that sometimes pops up in media.<p>The thing that isn't mentioned in the article and is in the paper is that the majority >80% of the greening is due to cropland instead of the forests.
China and India's commendable efforts aside, the whole earth has been affected by global environmental change: Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 791–795 (2016)<p>"We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning)."<p>"CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States."
I think its very important to engage with the fact that this is something China can do because of what we in the west deem unacceptably "authoritarian" governance. This effect isn't entirely due to people's starry-eyed conservationism: the government arrests people and closes factories that violate these ecological goals.<p>By way of example, this happened a few weeks ago and is very difficult to find coverage of in english speaking media: <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-makes-arrests-shuts-down-rogue-chemical-factories-that-spewed-banned-ozone-depleting-gas?fbclid=IwAR2D_XkH2BtI20r1AeessWBVp8uMXyIWpe5L4wQ1FZAPaWUreQjuwoszVU4" rel="nofollow">https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-makes-arrests-shut...</a>
i think we'll see this more and more as China shifts its manufacturing over to Africa (currently huge investments going on).<p>It doesn't really solve the problem, you just get to point at someone else who's now holding the ball instead of you when it all goes up in flames.
For sure! I'm not saying democracy should be abandoned. I'm saying that<p>1) china might not actually be quite like its depicted in the west
2) what we call authoritarian is often just counter to our ideology that people should be able to deploy capital however they see fit with little consequence.<p>Anyway your point that it just takes correctly allocated capital to solve this problem is 100% salient.<p>(And before anyone jumps on #2, yes, the CPC does not allow some types of political dissent that we are allowed in public in the west and that should be criticized. But we need to criticize it for the right reasons, as opposed to blindly asserting that nothing horrible has ever happened due to what I would call free speech fundamentalism.)