Forest, there is more forest! Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wants to plant trees for every newborn child, 10 per child. And that for 10 years!

The most important things about Orbán and the new forest in brief:

Orbán boldly announced in a speech that he would have 10 trees planted per newborn child for 10 years in order to increase the forest area to a certain amount. The problem: In purely mathematical terms, these forest areas are likely to be very sparsely planted. One can therefore assume that Órban's sentence is symbolic.

According to the government, the goal of planting ten trees for every newborn baby in Hungary will allow Hungarian forests to grow by 27 percent by 2030 and is part of a comprehensive package of measures to make Hungary 90% self-sufficient from fossil energy sources by 2030, i.e. “climate neutral.” “ ( more about the package here ).

[mk_ad]

New forest area is urgently needed in the country; the forest area currently only accounts for 23 percent of the entire national territory, compared to almost 30 percent in Germany. According to the World Bank ranking, Hungary ranks 104th in the world.

Hence his statement: By 2030, Orbán wants to have 10 trees planted for every newborn child in Hungary and thus increase the forest area by 27 percent.

27%: How did Orbán come up with this number?

The question is: does he want to increase BY 27% or increase TO 27%? Media often report an increase of 27%, which would then be an increase of 6.21 percentage points and means a forest area of ​​29.21%. So almost 30% of Hungary's total area. If he wanted to increase the proportion of forest area to 27%, that would be an increase of 4 percentage points.

[mk_ad]

Whatever: For Volker Plass, program manager at Greenpeace in Austria, both numbers do not represent a forest. At least that is what Plass writes on Facebook and criticizes many media outlets for not questioning what constitutes a forest. His bill:

Interesting phenomenon: A right-wing populist head of government makes a big announcement and puts out some number - and all the media dutifully spread it. Apparently none of the editorial teams think it's worth the effort to do a little math and expose Viktor Orbán's announcement for what it is: complete nonsense!

Orbán wants to plant 10 trees for every newborn Hungarian child by 2030. This will supposedly increase Hungary's forest area by 27 percent.

Let's do the math: just under 100,000 children are born in Hungary every year. Multiplied by 10 years and 10 trees each, that's around 10 million trees.

One can speak of a forest if there are around 1,500 trees in one hectare or 150,000 trees in one square kilometer. Orbàn wants to reforest around 67 square kilometers of forest.

That's fine, but with a current Hungarian forest area of ​​around 20,000 square kilometers (according to the World Bank), that's not an increase of 27 percent, but about 0.3 percent.

Let's do the math: Hungary has had a fairly constant birth rate of 9 - 9.5 newborns per 1,000 inhabitants for years out of a total population of 9.773 million (as of 2019, source here and here ).

So if you take 2019 as the starting point for the calculation, we have 9.773 million inhabitants and a birth rate of 9‰. According to the calculation, that amounts to 87,957 newborns, i.e. around 88,000 people. In purely mathematical terms, this would result in 880,000 trees per year.

As Orbán says and Plass also describes in his calculation, it is about a period of 10 years (until 2030). With a constant birth rate and the assumption that Hungary's population is decreasing ( source here based on UN data ), for example, around 5,000 fewer trees will be planted per year and we will end up with around 8,750,000 million trees be planted throughout the entire period.

This shows that Plass's rough calculation (intended for simplicity) is correct so far. We are at just under 10 million new trees. Now things are getting difficult: Plass's counter calculation assumes 1,500 trees per hectare, i.e. 150,000 trees per square kilometer. If we also take this number, the area with this amount of trees would correspond to 58.3 square kilometers in 10 years and is close to Plass's result.

As of 2016, Hungary has a forest area of ​​20,736 km² ( see here ). An increase of 58.3 km² corresponds to an increase of 0.28%. Our calculation here is also very close to the result that Plass published on Facebook (0.3%). Both numbers are far away from Orbán's 27% figure.

But these calculations have a very big problem: the number of trees for a forest is not defined!

When is the forest a forest?

This is where things get exciting. Orbán and Plass also talk about forest areas. Of course, this has to be defined to see whether the 27% is realistic.

Orbán does not define the term forest area any further. Plass, on the other hand, speaks of when “there are 150,000 trees in one square kilometer”. Basically, a forest is an area covered with trees. For example, the Federal Forest Act (yes, there is such a thing!) in Germany defines ( compare ):

Law for the Preservation of Forests and the Promotion of Forestry (Federal Forest Act) Section 2 Forest

(1) For the purposes of this law, a forest is any area covered with forest plants. Forests also include clear-cut or depleted areas, forest paths, forest division and security strips, forest areas and clearings, forest meadows, game grazing areas, timber storage areas and other areas connected to and serving the forest.

In Austria the forest is also defined by law ( compare ):

§ 1a.

(1) Forests within the meaning of this Federal Act are base areas covered with woody plants of the species listed in the appendix (forestry vegetation), provided that the vegetation reaches at least an area of ​​1,000 m 2 and an average width of 10 m.

Unfortunately, there is no further definition of how many trees per area make up a forest. The United Nations also doesn't give a real answer to the number of trees, only the minimum area. The United Nations Agricultural Organization describes that a forest must have a minimum area of ​​5,000 square meters, with only a tenth of the area covered by tree crowns.

In this respect, there is a loophole for Orbán's information, as there is no precise definition of the amount of trees. Plass' calculation, in turn, assumes 1,500 trees per hectare. The agricultural weekly also mentions this number in an article about reforestation ( see here ):

1,500 trees/ha is enough

The “schematic reduction” experimental area reduced the number of trees to 1,500 trees/ha in 2009. The stand can be walked through without any problems, the spruces appear vital and are currently showing their fresh, strong shoots.

In a brochure, the Upper Austria Chamber of Agriculture gives figures of 740 and 1,200 trees per hectare ( see here ):

Main tree species oak or beech: group size: 3 x 3 m; Number of plants in the group: 20 pieces (4 x 5 pieces);
Planting distance in the group: 1 x 0.75 m; Troop spacing: 12 m, plant requirement: approx. 1,230 pieces/ha.
Secondary tree species HBu, Li, Lä or similar: planting distance 2.5 m, plant requirement: approx. 740 pieces/ha

Nevertheless: No, there is no exact definition of how many trees a forest must have. There are recommendations for reforestation, but no compelling numbers. Therefore, in the last step it is important to know what Orbán's forest would look like (in purely mathematical terms, of course).

What does Orbán's forest look like mathematically?

In order to increase the forest area by 27% in 10 years (and reach almost 30% of the total forest area), Orbán needs a total forest area of ​​approximately 27,909 km². This corresponds to a new forest area of ​​approx. 7,173 km².

According to the calculation, he is equipping this new forest area with 8.75 million trees. This corresponds to 1,220 trees per km². That's 12 trees per hectare. What that means:

A standard football field has an average area of ​​0.714 hectares ( compare ). In comparison, Orbán's forest would be equivalent to 9 trees the size of a football field .

For some it is a forest, for others it could easily be played football in it.

Conclusion

Don't take this the wrong way: Orbán is probably really aiming for a forest area share of 30%, but his figures from the speech are rather striking figures and can be seen as a political gimmick.

What's exciting is that trees and reforestation are an insignificant part of Orbán's speech. Orbán's focus on reforestation overshadows the other points in his package of measures. We have in our article “ 10 trees for every newborn – The irradiated Trojan horse? “ a closer look at the entire package.

Article image Orban, forest: Shutterstock / By Belish


If you enjoyed this post and value the importance of well-founded information, become part of the exclusive Mimikama Club! Support our work and help us promote awareness and combat misinformation. As a club member you receive:

📬 Special Weekly Newsletter: Get exclusive content straight to your inbox.
🎥 Exclusive video* “Fact Checker Basic Course”: Learn from Andre Wolf how to recognize and combat misinformation.
📅 Early access to in-depth articles and fact checks: always be one step ahead.
📄 Bonus articles, just for you: Discover content you won't find anywhere else.
📝 Participation in webinars and workshops : Join us live or watch the recordings.
✔️ Quality exchange: Discuss safely in our comment function without trolls and bots.

Join us and become part of a community that stands for truth and clarity. Together we can make the world a little better!

* In this special course, Andre Wolf will teach you how to recognize and effectively combat misinformation. After completing the video, you have the opportunity to join our research team and actively participate in the education - an opportunity that is exclusively reserved for our club members!


Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )