Knock on Wood

In the Brazilian Amazon, 1.3 million hectares of rainforest disappeared between August 2020 and July 2021, up 22 percent from the year before. Because of climate change, at least in part, deserts are growing. Meanwhile, 41.3 percent of the world’s terrestrial surface is more or less arid drylands. Why not plant a whole lot of elms and pines and poplars in all that empty space, and sequester some carbon along the way? Afforestation, or the mass planting of trees where trees have never been, makes perfect environmental sense — doesn’t it?

According to Rosetta Elkin, a self-described “curious landscape architect” who holds senior academic positions at both McGill and Harvard, the answer is a hard no.

Elkin musters an impressive amount of source material and relentlessly solid arguments to support a powerful and compelling critique. With Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation, she offers an in‑depth analysis of three well-known mass...