On Wednesday, the company expanded that programme with a $400m investment in reforestation and a commitment to plant more than 200m trees by 2030 and ensure their long-term survival. The trees will be planted in Brazil, Vietnam, Ghana, Rwanda and India. Countries with tropical forests such as Brazil and Indonesia absorb the most carbon dioxide, and are critical in the battle against global heating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deforestation worsened last yearwhen an area the size of Switzerland was cleared from the most pristine rainforests, despite a political pledge made by world leaders at the CopP26 summit in 2021 to halt their destruction. The tropics lost 10% more forests than in 2021, according to figures from the\u00a0World Resources Institute\u00a0and the University of Maryland.\u00a0The forest loss produced 2.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to India\u2019s annual fossil fuel emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AstraZeneca says its tree-planting programme will remove an estimated 30m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It will offset some of the carbon emissions of the contractors it uses in its supply chain, as the drugmaker aims to become net zero by 2045. The carbon credits are shared with the governments of the countries where the trees are planted \u201cto avoid double counting\u201d, Soriot said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carbon-offsetting schemes are increasingly under scrutiny as many projects appear to have no positive impact on the climate, with scientists calling for the unregulated system to be reformed urgently.\u00a0Regulators are increasingly banning firms from making offsetting-based environmental claims\u00a0unless they can show that they work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss are damaging the planet and harming human health,\u201d Soriot said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking to the Guardian ahead of an event chaired by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney during\u00a0London Climate Week, he said AstraZeneca\u2019s projects would create jobs for local people and support up to 80,000 livelihoods. It is partnering with NGOs and the projects will be audited and assessed by independent experts, including the European Forest Institute, the firm said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As experts stress that the right species of trees need to be planted in the right locations and monitored over years to come, Soriot said AstraZeneca\u2019s programme was not about planting \u201cthe same trees \u2026 in big lines\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe also want to restore biodiversity,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that\u2019s why we have 300 species of trees and plants. We want to make sure that we restore the forest the way it was before. That is different by country. In fact, in Australia, for instance, it even varies by region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The drugmaker plans to use drones to assess tree growth and health, and hi-res satellite imagery to monitor the condition of trees and the projects\u2019 impact on water and soil and carbon stocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The boss of Britain\u2019s biggest drugmaker, Pascal Soriot, has warned that the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss are damaging the planet and human health, as it announced a $400m (\u00a3310m) plan to plant 200m trees by 2030. The offsetting scheme is one of the biggest tree-planting programmes globally. In 2020,\u00a0AstraZeneca\u00a0pledged to plant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":35452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4294,9918,3347,7358,6607,7559,2422,5307,9328,10869,7893,3862,9088,2961,10823,11805,7747,8043,8116,7445,1258,9505,7162,5575,6569,192,6543,12634,5440,8124,9343,7407,3684,10634,2603,10303,1674,11973,10302,6027,12917,1573,9205,9162,5348,10304,12605,214,3194,6348,10024,8869,3954,10415,36],"class_list":["post-35451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-and-india","tag-astrazeneca","tag-australia","tag-bank","tag-bank-of-england","tag-biodiversity","tag-brazil","tag-britain","tag-carbon","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-chain","tag-climate-change","tag-container","tag-contractors","tag-counting","tag-create-jobs","tag-crises","tag-deforestation","tag-destruction","tag-drones","tag-england","tag-european","tag-fossil-fuel","tag-france","tag-fuel","tag-ghana","tag-growth","tag-health","tag-india","tag-indonesia","tag-investment","tag-jobs","tag-london","tag-lost","tag-maryland","tag-medicine","tag-offset","tag-one","tag-plant","tag-pledge","tag-ratcliffe","tag-rwanda","tag-satellite","tag-scientists","tag-switzerland","tag-trees","tag-uk","tag-university","tag-university-of-maryland","tag-us","tag-vietnam","tag-water","tag-will","tag-work","tag-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Pascal](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/5be53c975d1f4344e6b8ea4584c2e34cdf2c0c3e\/0_0_3500_2101\/master\/3500.jpg?width=445&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none\")