碳市场和相关国际方案允许向土地所有者付款用于植树，有时候这被称为碳农业，它们的目的是支持从大气中截存碳。但是，发表在10月号的《生物科学》（BioScience）的一篇论文说，如果在土地使用的决策中不考虑到让农业土地恢复植被的其他协同收益和负收益，它们将会产生有害效应，诸如让生态系统退化和导致食品供应问题。
澳大利亚联邦科学与工业研究组织的Brenda B. Lin和她的同事评估了人们尝试进行碳农业的各种方式。简单的利益最大化可能导致进入碳市场的土地所有者建立单一作物种植园，这不能支持生物多样性并且为当地居民提供环境收益。但是诸如在农场种植林带、农林业——把树木整合到农作物系统中——以及把边缘或农作物用地恢复植被可能在截存碳的同时产生广泛的环境收益。
例如，这些收益可能包括减少污染外溢和侵蚀，以及更好的防风、害虫控制和授粉。此外，有当地参与和买进的方案更可能在长期时间里成功，因为它们能够利用当地的关于树木如何能够茁壮生长的知识，因此也就会一直受欢迎。Lin和她的同事敦促碳农业方案的组织者超越仅仅把焦点放在碳上，考虑恢复植被的协同收益，同时让当地居民参与政策决策，而不仅仅是让私人土地拥有者参与。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐的英文报道
Carbon farming schemes should consider multiple cobenefits
Encouraging locals' participation is more likely to lead to success
Carbon markets and related international schemes that allow payments to landholders for planting trees, sometimes called carbon farming, are intended to support sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere. But they will have harmful effects, such as degrading ecosystems and causing food supply problems, if other benefits and disbenefits from revegetating agricultural landscapes are not also taken into account in land-use decisions, according to an article published in the October issue of BioScience.
Brenda B. Lin of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and her colleagues assessed a variety of ways that people have attempted carbon farming. Simple maximization of profit can lead landholders accessing carbon markets to create monoculture plantations, which do not support biodiversity and provide few environmental benefits to local inhabitants. But alternatives such as planting strips of trees on farms, agroforestry—integrating trees into cropping systems—and revegetation of marginal or crop land can sequester carbon while also yielding a broad spectrum of environmental benefits.
These benefits may include, for example, reduced pollution outflow and erosion, and better wind protection, pest control, and pollination. What is more, schemes that have local participation and buy-in are more likely to be successful over the long term, because they can draw on local knowledge about trees likely to thrive and will remain popular. Lin and her colleagues urge organizers of carbon farming schemes to move beyond a carbon-only focus and consider cobenefits of revegetation, while involving local inhabitants, not just private landowners, in policy decisions.
