WTF? Lawns a big contributor to climate change | WATCH - Property News AU/NZ | propertynoise.co.nz & propertynoise.com.au

PHOTO: Auckland Council said it can’t order people what to do in their backyards, but it can encourage them

There’s a call for a radical and fundamental rethink of parks and the grassy quarter-acre sections many Kiwis aspire to.

Auckland University of Technology’s Professor Len Gillman says it’s because of climate change.

“And most people don’t really understand how bad it’s going to get,” he said.

He’s helped write a new research paper, “Calling Time on the Imperial Lawn”.

Its findings show that although lawns are often thought to capture carbon from the atmosphere, that’s not the case, once mowing, fertilising and watering are taken into account.

It says mown grass, in almost every case, is putting carbon out.

Over 20 years it could be as much as 43.9 tonnes of carbon equivalent per hectare but other estimates put it much higher.

The paper calls for change both at home and on public land, digging up any unused lawn and placing it underneath trees instead, is the answer.

“We need to be planting, we’ve got to cut emissions, that’s critical,” Gillman said.

Mown grass is “ubiquitous and everywhere”, he said.

“For example, there’s about 16 million hectares of it in the US alone, which is the size of England and Belgium combined,” he told 1News.

“Even if we planted just a third of grass in cities around the world we can absorb 6000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over two decades, so it’s quite a lot.”

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He said while lawns are desirable for many, often much of it goes unused.

“The side of the roads, the bits of park that’s sort of tucked away in the corner somewhere that nobody ever uses, there’s lots of grass that actually could be planted up and we need to be planting it.”

His paper says it’s imperative governing bodies put policies and incentives in place.

Auckland Council said it can’t order people what to do in their backyards, but it can encourage them.

Facilities manager for parks and community facilities, Karl Beaufort, said the council is “100%” into the idea of swapping lawns for trees.

“We think it’s a really great thing to explore at your own home,” he said.

“There’s a lot of history around how lawns came about and social ranking based on lawns all came from a UK heritage and I think it’s time we start to look to change that and look towards New Zealand’s nature and what does actually a New Zealand back yard look like.”

He spoke with 1News from a council “low mow” trial patch.

Grass on reserve land is taken out of the regular mowing schedule and instead cut twice a year.

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He said the results of this can be used to inform politicians about what mowing works best on council land and how the council can be cutting its carbon footprint.

“And if people are happy with that, and it’s socially acceptable, we think that’s a win,” he said.

Howell Davies is Auckland Council’s senior advisor for urban forests.

“Our council’s got an Urban Ngahere (Forest) Strategy looking to try to increase our overall canopy cover from the current 18% to 30%,” said Davies.

“And we really do rely on landowners and council to be involved in that overall aspirational goal, so retaining trees and planting more trees on private property is as important as council’s role of planting trees on council land.”

In planting his seed for change, AUT’s Prof Len Gillman said councils everywhere need to do more.

”They need to take a much bigger lead, and this is local government throughout the world,” he said.

“Incentives that get people thinking about it and motivate them to do it.”

What the study says

The rate of carbon emissions from mowing depends on the size and type of mower and how often it’s used, but 1.1 to 5.5 million tonnes of carbon could be emitted in the USA alone from mowing every year.
Adding fertiliser causes emissions from nitrous oxide.
Watering lawns cause emissions due to the energy needed to capture, pump and move water.
There will need to be a fundamental shift in what people perceive as desirable and usable in parks, but the climate crisis is of such magnitude that all possible options must be considered.