Is rewilding a viable option in Europe's fight against climate change?

Halt deforestation by the end of this decade: that was the aim which more than 100 international leaders agreed on at last year's UN climate change conference, COP26. But the ongoing energy crisis which emerged since then, after the war in Ukraine began, has contributed to the continuation of logging, particularly in eastern Europe, as consumers struggle with rising fuel bills. In some cases, protected woodlands are being felled to meet demand.?

Degraded land, which often has fewer trees, stores less carbon. Across Europe, more than 80% of land is considered "degraded", according to the World Economic Forum, which means its productivity has been diminished by human activity. ?

What difference can rewilding make?

NGO Rewilding Europe has said that allowing forests to regenerate naturally is the most "practical, immediate and cost-effective solution to our ecological and climate emergencies". Rewilding is the process of allowing an environment, such as a forest, to return to its natural state. Sometimes this also includes the reintroduction of species which have disappeared from the area, due to causes such as hunting or habitat loss.?

When Eoghan Daltun, author of An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, began rewilding farm land in County Cork in southwest Ireland 13 years ago, it had not been farmed in around 100 years. He and his family moved from Dublin to the old farm, and began the process of restoring the land.?

"Nature and wild natural ecosystems are not a luxury," says Daltun. "It's not just a question of saying, 'oh, it would be nice to do that' – we absolutely need to. It's possibly the most important thing that we need to be doing."?

Although native trees had recovered on Daltun's land, feral goats and Sika deer, both non-native species, had overgrazed the area, eating seedlings, stripping bark from the trees, and destroying the forest's floral carpet. He put up a fence to keep them out and has brought the patch of land closer to a fully recovered Atlantic rainforest.?

A number of similar projects are ongoing, and seeing results, across Europe, including Dunsany Nature Reserve, also in Ireland. Eight years ago, owner Randal Plunkett began rewilding part of his family's ancestral lands, which now form the reserve, in County Meath, west of Dublin. Since then, his family's 520 hectare estate has seen the return of many plant and animal species which had been absent when the land was fully farmed, including a 35% increase in birds and a doubling in insect numbers.?

Over the eight years, Plunkett has seen various cycles of different plants – including many species considered weeds – resurge and die off, providing both the land with nutrients, and animal and insect species with food and shelter. These plant cycles, including the annual die-back, is a necessary component to the land's regeneration, says Plunkett.

"Biodiversity isn't flower meadows. That's all nice, it's good on Instagram, but biodiversity sometimes doesn't look pretty," says Plunkett, on the role which death has in successful rewilding.

"What we need to give nature is time and the resources for it to replenish itself. And what I mean by resources, [is] leaving things be."

Can conservation targets and food production go together?

However, concerns have been raised around whether the level of food production required to meet Europe's demands can be met if land is rewilded. Rewilding Europe has said that land which is not particularly productive could be rewilded, meaning high-yield land can continue to be farmed. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has said that rewilding should not be done without consultation of local communities, especially where farming, forestry or fishing are part of the economy. Currently, there are few funding options in Europe though for farmers who might want to rewild some, or all of their land.

Daltun argues that food production requirements can be met alongside conservation targets. Both he and Plunkett believe that farmers should have the option, financially, through the support of subsidies, to rewild some or all of their land. Furthermore, he says, rewilding can play a role in food production, through the support of a stable biosphere.

"The proportion of wild vertebrates on the planet has collapsed by 70% since 1970, and that is catastrophic," says Daltun. "That collapse is affecting every species category.?

"It isn't just something that's a tragedy in terms of species that have taken hundreds of millions, even billions of years to evolve, it represents a massive threat to human life, because all human life and everything that we hold dear from civilization to organized society depends on a stable biosphere"

Plunkett agrees, and makes the case for increasing the use of urban environments to produce food.

"We should be incorporating nature within our building, within our rooftops," he says. "Bees are doing better in cities than they are in the country largely because of chemicals. We spray a huge amount of chemicals that are hazardous to our health, hazardous to the ecosystem. And in cities, although the habitats don't exist as well there, they don't have the same level of chemicals, or at least not those kinds of chemicals.?

"Imagine how much food could be produced inside the city itself. If we want to really start challenging climate change, we really have to not waste an inch."

Would you like to rewild land? Do you think it's a worthwhile practice? Share your thoughts in the comments and with the hashtag #greenertogether.?

Read more from LinkedIn News Europe's sustainability and COP27 coverage:

• The future of chocolate may be cocoa-less
• What is COP27 and can it save the planet?
• How can finance become greener?