Protecting Old Trees vs Planting New Trees: Which Project is Best for Your Needs?

Everyone knows that trees play an essential role in addressing climate change.

Carbon markets are a valuable mechanism for supporting nature-based solutions (NBS), like protecting rainforests, planting trees, and making sure existing natural forests are well-managed.

NBS also have additional benefits (co-benefits) that go beyond carbon impacts: to biodiversity, ecosystem services such as regulating water, and to local communities.

The value of NBS is clear. What's less clear is which projects are best to support. Should we focus on protecting forests that are already there, or replanting trees we've previously lost? If you've read previous blogs in this series, you won't be shocked to learn: the answer is both.

Planting trees and protecting forests are necessary and valuable, as long as the projects are well designed. Here's why:

How do trees impact climate change?

Here at Sylvera, we love trees.

Between our collective team, we've written enough blogs, dissertations, and even PhD theses to fill a book on why trees are an incredible natural resource. A few stats for you:

• Forest ecosystems are a huge storage unit of carbon. The IPCC found that forests today store more carbon dioxide than was added to the atmosphere by human activity since the industrial revolution. In other words, they're essential to improve air quality.
• Forests take in CO2 as they grow, resulting in them absorbing ¼ of all historical emissions. In other words, climate change might be significantly worse if it weren't for existing forests—both young forests and mature forests alike.
• Forests can provide ⅓ of the cost-effective climate change mitigation needed by 2030.

• Bonus nerdy fact: the huge effect of existing trees on CO2 in the atmosphere can be seen on graphs of CO2 concentration over time. If you look carefully, you'll see it wiggles up and down on a yearly cycle. The down wiggles match the northern hemisphere's spring and summer, when most of the trees in the world are growing fastest.
• However, when trees are cut down all that stored carbon is released into the atmosphere. Deforestation and other land use change is the second largest contributor to climate change, after burning fossil fuels. 

Surely that's convinced you that trees are really worth investing in. But how?

Carbon markets and forests

There are many types of nature-based carbon credits available, but the most common forestry credits fall into three categories: REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), ARR (afforestation, reforestation and revegetation), and IFM (improved forest management).

Each type of project has strengths and weaknesses, but the most important point is that generalizations can't be made about project type and quality. Some REDD+ projects are amazing for people and the planet. Some have no carbon benefits and yield negative impacts on local communities. The same range in quality can be found in IFM and ARR projects.

Should you plant or protect trees?

Many differences between these projects come down to the fundamental question of whether we should prioritize protecting old growth forests that already exist or nurturing young trees?

At a global scale, that is a false dichotomy. As we've argued before, we need to utilize all the climate mitigation strategies available to us.

To limit global warming to 1.5°C, global emissions need to peak by 2025, halve over the next decade, and reach net zero by 2050. This is impossible if we don't stop deforestation very soon. Equally, even in optimistic emissions reduction scenarios, we will rely on removals until 2050. Forest restoration offers one of the few solutions for carbon removal currently possible at scale.

The case for mature trees

Protecting forests is essential to combat both the climate crisis, and the parallel biodiversity crisis. We rely on mature trees for a huge range of ecosystem services, some of which we don't even recognize until the forest is gone. Furthermore, the intrinsic benefits of forests is invaluable, hosting innumerable unique species that will go extinct without forests.

Plus, mature trees offer better protection against soil erosion, as their large canopies prevent rain water from hitting the forest floor, while their roots take up water and promote infiltration. Were these things not to happen, more soil carbon would be released into the atmosphere.

The need for newly planted trees

But it's also important to recognize that huge areas of forest have already been lost or degraded. Restoring just a small fraction of this via tree planting programs has the potential to buy us valuable time. Time we can use to develop new technologies (like Direct Air Capture, which garners a lot of media attention for its carbon sequestration potential) and necessary infrastructure to reduce and remove carbon emissions.

Furthermore, newly planted trees add resilience to threatened biodiversity, and help various animal species adapt to the effects of climate change.

However, not all ARR projects provide these benefits. They must be well designed, well implemented, and able to restore diverse, native vegetation.

Which project should you choose?

There are a few considerations for carbon credit buyers deciding between ARR, IFM and REDD+.

For example, what are you using the credits for? Some climate claims have strict requirements. Once you have reached your net zero mitigation target, you must use removals to neutralise residual emissions, so ARR would be the best choice.

You might also have an interest in certain co-benefits, such as protecting specific wildlife habitats. Credits with strong co-benefits like this generally attract a price premium.

The most important consideration is that credits are high quality and have a genuine positive impact on the planet. There is no shortcut or proxy for that. Failing to engage in this due diligence leads to greenwashing accusations and wasted spend. Worse, you won't actually reduce greenhouse gases.

Luckily, Sylvera can do this hard work for you. We care just as much about recognizing quality solutions as we do about trees!

How can Sylvera's tools and data help buyers choose between projects?

Sylvera has a unique offering of tools and data to help buyers and investors make smart, low-risk decisions across different project types. Combining the market’s most trusted project ratings with live market data helps buyers better understand the what’s available, at what quality and price. 

For example, instead of just seeing that REDD+ projects cost $6-12, ARR projects cost $12-18, and IFM projects cost $18-25, buyers can understand why these price differences exist and whether they're getting good value. Our platform shows that a BBB-rated ARR project at $15 might offer better risk-adjusted value than a C-rated REDD+ project at $8, because the quality rating reveals the underlying permanence and additionality risks that justify the price premium.

This approach transforms carbon procurement from commodity buying into strategic, confident carbon portfolio building. Buyers can identify when high-quality projects are trading below their typical quality-adjusted range, build balanced portfolios based on risk profiles rather than just geography, and future-proof their investments by understanding which project types are gaining favor with other buyers and regulators. 

So, rather than making decisions like "let's buy cheap forest credits," sophisticated buyers can now ask "which BBB-rated projects across different types offer the best risk-adjusted value right now?"