While preserving the world’s forests is widely considered essential to combating climate change, scientists in South Africa have determined that invasive tree species are sucking up so much groundwater that the area is better off eliminating the trees.
Hope they thought through the whole story. Cape town has a micorclimate squeezed between sea and desert, so it may be a special case, but in general as climate changes, plants should be able to migrate too. Trees evapo-transpire, large areas of trees help to create clouds, and convection cells, and maybe rain. So such policy might help increase groundwater in the short term, but not in the longer term.