Forests and Climate Change

Climate change has the potential to be the greatest environmental threat facing the Earth, the largest driver of human poverty, and the greatest new hazard to human health. It has the potential to adversely impact forest biodiversity and reducing the ability of forests to provide soil and water protection, habitat for species and other ecosystem services.

Forest Definition: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines forest as land with a tree canopy cover of more than 10% and an area of more than half a hectare. Definition includes forest plantations but specifically excludes fruit tree and oil palm plantations and agroforestry systems. Other organizations like the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) specifies 40% cover as the threshold for "closed forests" and 10 - 40% cover for "open forests" .

Global forest cover is 3952 million ha in 2005, about 30% of the world's land area. However, only 36% of this is classified as primary forest. Global forest vegetation stores 283 Gt of carbon in its biomass, 38 Gt in dead wood and 317 Gt in soils (top 30 cm), with an estimated total of 638 Gt for 2005. This is greater than the amount of carbon in the entire atmosphere. In addition, there is an annual uptake of 2.4 Gt from terrestrial carbon, a good deal of which is sequestered by forests.

Forests thus present a significant global carbon stock. They have a potentially significant role to play in climate change adaptation planning and global economy.

An international team of scientists has discovered that rainforest trees are getting bigger. The bigger trees therefore are storing more carbon from the atmosphere in their trunks. This has significantly reduced the level of atmospheric carbon thus reducing the rate of climate change.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that globally human activity emits 32 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, but only 15 billion tonnes actually stays in the atmosphere to effect climate change. Where are the ‘missing’ 17 billion tonnes? Half of that is dissolved in the oceans, and the other half, according to Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds in Nature, Feb 19 2009 issue, is on land. But where exactly on land cannot be precisely established yet.

"According to our study about half the total carbon ‘land sink’ is in tropical forest trees,” explained Dr Lewis. Tropical rainforests account for less than 6% of the Earth's land area. But they store up to half of the carbon locked inside the Earth's terrestrial vegetation, behaving as a critical sponge for greenhouse gases, playing an outsized role in climate change.
Globally, tropical trees in undisturbed forest absorb about 18% or 4.8 billion tonnes of the carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels. This includes a previously unknown carbon sink in Africa, mopping up 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

When trees are felled or burned, the carbon they store escapes back into the air. Deforestation is responsible for about 18% of all greenhouse gases ( GHG )emissions and 24% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
This makes deforestation the third largest source of GHG emissions - larger than the entire global transport sector. Annual forest emissions are comparable to the total from US or China.

Thus tropical forests conservation is gaining widespread support, and is likely to be a key theme of the upcoming negotiations to limit carbon emissions in Copenhagen later this year 2009. It is undisputable for the forestry sector to play a central role in mankind's effort to stabilize emissions.

But rainforests covers have been shrinking rapidly in the 20th century due to deforestation, though current rate of loss has decreased. The lower rate of forest loss is due to increased forest cover in the mid-latitudes, off-setting deforestation in the tropics.

Period	deforestation rate	Net loss after restoration efforts
1990's	12.9 million ha/yr	8.9
2000 - 2005	13.1	7.3

Forests disappear naturally due to fire, hurricanes or other disturbances, however most deforestation in the past 40,000 years has been anthropogenic. Human activities include logging, grazing, change of land use for cultivation, construction of dams and infrastructure.

Australia's worst forest fires on record fed by 60 mph winds, record heat and drought; caught even fire-savvy Australians by surprise. The scale of the disaster shocked a nation that endures deadly firestorms every few years.

A fire truck in front a bushfire, Victoria, Australia
(Photograph: Andrew Brownbill/EPA)

Why Global Warming May Be Fueling Australia's Fires Feb 10, 2009

The continent's worst forest fires on record have bumped up the size of Australia's carbon footprint. The fires north of Melbourne that have burned out 450,000 hectares of trees have let off a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Sydney University researcher Mark Adams said. He estimates one week's blazes released almost as much as the nation's industries did in the whole of last year.

Other natural disaster like the snow disaster in China in Jan 2008 also caused serious deforestation. A total of 17.3 million hectares of forests, about one-tenth of China's forest resources, have been damaged by the unprecedented snow wreckage in at least five decades, with forests, bamboo and seedlings in some parts of the country seriously destroyed. (Chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-02/09)


Man made forest fires which clear land for cattle to graze (Greenpeace)		Forests disappear naturally due to hurricane	Deforestation due to logging

Largest losses occur in S. America, Africa and S.E.Asia. Almost 90% of rainforest in West Africa and 67% in Madagascar has been destroyed. It was revealed in a report in 2006, by Forest Trends that: tropical rainforests in Indonesia would be logged out in 10 years, Papua New Guinea 13 -16 years, with no better situation in Myanmar.

Several countries have declared their deforestation a national emergency. Amazon deforestation jumped by 69% in 2008 compared to 2007 according to official government data. Deforestation could severely damage nearly 60% of the Amazon rainforest by 2030, according to a new report from WWF.

The Amazon river basin rainforest contains a wider variety of plant and animal lives than any other biome in the world. Millions of people depend, directly or indirectly, on the Amazon forests for their livelihood: farmers sell crops at home and into the world markets; the forest sector accounts for almost 8% of Brazil's annual wealth. For a country like Brazil, it has the largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, comprising about 40% of the world's remaining tropical forest cover. Forest represents both an extraordinary resource for its people; and an invaluable asset for the people of the world. And the great Amazon basin sustains millions of indigenous people who depend on its rich natural endowment for their every need. Tropical rain forests are called the "world's largest pharmacy" because over one-quarter of modern medicines originate from its plants.

Forest also offer ecosystem solutions such as rainfall control, flood defense, soil stability and biodiversity support. Some data collected on rainforest tree growth alarmingly indicate that global warming may cause the rainforests to emit more carbon dioxide than they take up. Deforestation results in soil degradation and declines in biodiversity.

As we become increasingly aware of the important role forest ecosystems play in our current and future lives, we begin to understand just how important it is that we manage them wisely and with a very long-term perspective of mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development.

Tackling the deforestation issue is of undisputable urgency. Currently it is considered as one of the cheapest and most effective ways of reducing global carbon dioxide emissions and providing sustainable development. If we do not tackle deforestation, it is highly unlikely that we could achieve a carbon dioxide stabilization target that avoids the worst effects of climate change. At the preparatory conference in Bali, 27 countries including the US and China recognizes the importance of reducing deforestation emissions and a system of international finance to meet this goal. Thus tropical forests conservation is likely to be a key theme of the upcoming negotiations to limit carbon emissions in Copenhagen later this year 2009.

The Kyoto Protocol currently does not include the utilization of the carbon sequestration and carbon emissions resulting from deforestation in support of sustainable rainforest management in the tropics. Currently, its Clean Development Mechanism ( CDM ) project activities relating to forestry are limited to reforestation and afforestation projects. Therefore, international regulations must be reviewed related to carbon emissions trading to include assets based on forest carbon sequestration and/or emissions caused by deforestation.

Mitigation activities in forestry involving commercial bioenergy in the medium to long term, is expected to contribute positively to employment, economic growth, exports, renewable energy supply and poverty alleviation. Overall, in the long-term, mitigation will increase the carbon sink, mitigate the effect of climate change for the well being of mankind.

Reference and related news:

Tropical Rainforest: Blueplanetbiomes.org
Climate Change: Financing Global Forests - Eliasch Review
Congo Rainforest Given Hope As Deals Cancelled: The Independent
Deforestation Causes Global Warming: Fao.org Sep 04, 2006
Initiatives: Carbon Emissions: Rainforestcoalition.org
Utah firefighters headed for Australia to fight killer wildfires Feb 15, 2009
Australia's forest fire toll climbs - 173 dead (3rd Roundup) Feb 09, 2009
Australian bushfires pump out millions of tonnes of carbon Feb 13, 2009
Forest fire carbon footprint really big, researcher says (Extra) Feb 12, 2009
Why Global Warming May Be Fueling Australia's Fires Feb 10, 2009
CBFP.org
1/5 of Fossil Fuel Emissions Absorbed by Threatened Forests: Nature, February 19th 2009 issue
Climate Change, Biodiversity and Land Degradation: UNCCD.int

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