Tree planting can cause ecological damage when carried out poorly, particularly if there is no commitment to diversity of planting. Planting more forests is a potent tool for mitigating the climate crisis, but forests are like complex machines with millions of parts. Scientists and policymakers from Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US came together recently to discuss if Darwin’s idea provides a way to plant new forests that absorb and store carbon securely.

Darwin’s idea of growing lots of different plants together to increase the overall yield is now being explored by leading academics, who research forests and climate change. There is no human technology that can compete with forests for take-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and its storage. It has taken a century and a half - ironically about as long as it can take to grow an oak to harvest - and a climate crisis to make policymakers and land owners take Darwin’s idea seriously and apply it to trees.

More than 150 years ago Victorian biologist Charles Darwin made a powerful observation: that a mixture of species planted together often grow more strongly than species planted individually.

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