Forests Can Soak Up a Third of Carbon Emissions

Report commissioned by Prince Charles’s charity says protecting tropical forests could enable them to absorb billions of tonnes of the Earth’s emissions of carbon.

Looking after the world’s tropical forests would be worthwhile in its own right, for the sake of their human and animal inhabitants and their wider effects on the natural world.

But researchers say it would also have a significant bonus.  Properly cared for, the forests could cancel out between a quarter and a third of the planet’s carbon emissions.

They argue that it is not just outright destruction of the trees that is the problem, but the ways in which the forests become degraded by the incursion of different forms of development − logging, obviously, but also fires, mining, ranching, roads, and their effect in splitting the huge tracts of forested land into smaller and more isolated patches.

In a report commissioned by Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, they say deforestation and degradation of the forests may account together for between 14% and 21% (1.4-2.2 gigatonnes of carbon, or GtC; a gigatonne is a billion metric tonnes) of all emissions of carbon, and perhaps even more if tropical peatlands and mangroves are included.

Atmospheric carbon
Against this, the forests absorb almost as much atmospheric carbon as they account for − an annual total of 1.2-1.8GtC, the authors say.  But the report argues that simply offsetting the amount of carbon sequestered in this way against the amount emitted is insufficient, for two reasons.

The first is the evidence that human activities are responsible for a significant proportion of CO2 absorption.  Second, total emissions are probably much higher than the traditional greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting approach allows.

Taken together, these two factors suggest that slowing damage to the forests and keeping them in the best condition possible is more important than many people have realised.

But the forests continue to suffer damage.  The report says: “…it can be argued that the causes and consequences of tropical forest degradation have been given too little attention, with the science now pointing toward degradation being a very significant component both of greenhouse gas emissions and the weakening of forest ecosystems”.

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