What is the actual impact of official tree planting?

A government nature project could sequester up to 2.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually, according to an LJMU environmental report.

The £640 million Nature for Climate Fund supports the UK’s climate and biodiversity goals through woodland creation - planting around 11 million trees between 2020-24, across 259 local authorities

Estimates of the total annual carbon removal calculated by LJMU’s Natural Capital Hub (NCH) research centre are equivalent to 20,000 flights from London to New York,

The hub also measured how much the woodland had impacted ecology and species, air pollution, flood regulation and water quality.

Nature restoration benefits

The team released their report as the government commissioned the NCH to continue its partnership until 2030 under the Defra Trees Programme.

Dr Colm Bowe, director of NCH, said: “Bringing together information from thousands of sites gave us an opportunity to understand the benefits that nature restoration can provide for people, wildlife and the climate.

“We are delighted that this work will continue through to 2030, evaluating the DEFRA Trees Programme. This will allow us to build an even richer picture of how these benefits develop over time.”

The Natural Capital Hub is the leading centre researching the economic and social value of nature and specialises in embedding natural capital into regional and local authority policy and planning. 

Dr Bowe, Dr Sandra Angers Blondin and the team designed scalable indicators to evaluate impacts from site to programme level for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, air quality, flood mitigation, and water quality.

Key statistics

These indicators have been applied to all planting conducted between 2020 and 2025 – around 20 million trees at 7,594 sites. Compared to previous land use, the planting could deliver:

• Up to 2.4 million tonnes of CO2 sequestration;
• expansion of ecological networks by up to 24,692 hectares;
• removal of 454 –519 tonnes of air pollutants annually;
• storage of 4.6 million cubic metres of water for flood regulation;
• annual removal of 358 tonnes of nitrogen and 6.7 tonnes of phosphorus to improve water quality.

Dr Bowe added: “Interestingly, there is no single model for successful woodland creation. Some organisations have created large numbers of very small sites close to towns and cities, while others have established larger woods that can create extensive habitat and store substantial amounts of carbon.”