Urban emissions figures show why tree planting does not replace source reduction policies, especially in the transport sector
The plot is known: public managers plant seedlings, pose for photos and announce a climate response based on green. In , this speech requires revision. The dissemination of thousands of new shifts the central debate: it is not possible to neutralize urban emissions with compensatory planting alone, as critical evaluations of forest offset policies in urban areas already indicate. Carbon is not resolved on the construction site, but in the system that produces it.
This logic of prioritizing symbolic gestures, to the detriment of integrated policies, echoes a scenario in which environmental legislation moves in one direction while the norm and operational devices move in another, leaving urban afforestation and climate actions without a stable normative basis.
Numbers help dismantle the narrative. The city hall announces the target of 290 thousand seedlings. The data seems significant until it is compared with the existing stock: around 650 thousand trees currently make up the city’s road afforestation. A USP study indicates that more than 600,000 trees were lost in the metropolitan region between 2005 and 2020, a trend observed
also in other metropolises under urban pressure. The announced advance covers only a fraction of this accumulated loss.
The official inventory reports that São Paulo emits around 16.6 million tons of CO₂ per year, equivalent to 1.4 tons per inhabitant. An adult tree sequesters an average of 22 kilos of CO₂ per year. Neutralizing a single year of emissions would require approximately 754 million adult trees, distributed over an area approximately three times the municipality’s territory. The announced target covers 0.04% of this need. Planting, presented as a climate solution, does not correspond to the scale of the problem.
The global average of emissions is 4.6 tons of CO₂ per person per year. Even in contexts with lower per capita emissions, such as São Paulo, planting is not sustainable as a climate response. The carbon budget defined by UNEP indicates that each person should emit a maximum of 2.1 tons per year by 2050. The São Paulo average is below this limit, but this does not authorize complacency: 75.9% of the city’s emissions come from the transport sector, powered by fossil fuels.
This is where the compensation discourse becomes problematic. While the public authorities invest political capital in planting, relevant for thermal comfort, drainage and urban health, they avoid facing the sector that concentrates emissions. The seedlings planted today will take around 20 years to reach full sequestration capacity. Current emissions continue without structural response. The issue is not to stop planting trees. They fulfill urban functions. The problem is presenting them as a climate solution. Effective reduction of emissions requires technological change, reorganization of urban space and political decision, as highlighted by international urban mitigation guidelines.
If São Paulo intends to treat carbon seriously, it needs to shift the focus to mobility: progressively remove diesel buses from the fleet, discourage the use of private cars and ensure transparency about the emissions avoided by public transport and non-motorized travel. Trees matter. But they don’t neutralize a metropolis powered by diesel and gasoline. São Paulo does not lack seedlings, it lacks political decision and action. Carbon does not negotiate and the bill
remains open.
*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Jovem Pan.
