Taran Volckhausen: Mongabay Series: Amazon Conservation, Global Forests - Paris accord ‘impossible to implement’ if tropical forest loss not stopped.
+ Human activity is already threatening 80% of the world’s forests with destruction or degradation. Deforestation is also putting ecosystems and 50% of the world’s biodiversity at risk, along with forest peoples.
+ Atop that, dense intact tropical forests serve as vital carbon sinks. But forest loss accounted for 8% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions in 2018, while intact tropical forest loss from 2000 to 2013 will result in over 626% more long-term carbon emissions through 2050 than previously thought, according to new research.
+ Zooming in on just one example, 17% of the Amazon has been cleared at one time or another. Another 20% has been degraded. In 2019, the deforestation rate there shot up 30% from the year before. The risk is that climate change combined with deforestation could lead to an Amazon forest collapse, with huge releases of carbon.
+ If tropical nations, and nations consuming forest products, but had the political will, then the world’s forests could be conserved. One approach: create buffers around intact tropical forests by reducing road networks while reforesting. Also, give indigenous groups more power to protect forests, as they’re proven to be the best stewards.
Across the tropics, flames rip through forests, chainsaws tear down ancient trees, while elite farmers and ranchers make a grab for more land belonging to the public or to indigenous people — a land-hunger fed by commodities trading giants and global investors in pursuit of ever higher profits gained from international markets in the EU, China, the U.S. and elsewhere.
In tropical regions today, human activity already threatens 80% of forests with degradation and destruction, while ongoing loss of tropical forests has a devastating impact on rural forest-dwelling peoples and on ecosystems that support 50% of the world’s biodiversity.
Representatives meeting this month from countries around the world in Madrid, Spain for the 25th United Nations Climate Change conference (COP 25) did nothing to help matters, stonewalling virtually all measures to conserve tropical forests. Meanwhile, a clearer picture is emerging as to the effects of tropical deforestation will have in the near future on our planet’s climate — looming consequences appear far bleaker than previously thought.
+++ A darkening prospect for intact forests >>>
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently published a study in the journal Science Advances suggesting intact tropical forest loss from 2000 to 2013 will result in over 626% more long-term carbon emissions through 2050 than previously thought. The researchers arrived at this upward revision by adding up emissions that would have been removed from the air if tropical forest remained intact, from selective logging, defaunation, and carbon stock degradation at forest edges that had been overlooked in previous studies.
Study co-author Tom Evans told Mongabay that forest conservation was recognized as critical for mitigation and adaptation to climate change in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. However, despite that initial commitment, he noted that not enough attention has been given since to protection of intact forests for climate change mitigation.
“We knew that large forest blocks should be getting a great deal of attention for their role in climate change mitigation and adaptation, but we saw that wasn’t happening, with most programs focused on frontier forests,” Evans said. “We took a look at carbon emission estimates from previous studies to clarify why these [intact forest] areas are as important [to curbing climate change] as they are.
Dense intact tropical forests serve as vital carbon sinks, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as their carbon-hungry plants and trees continue to put on growth. And they serve an outsized role in sequestration: while the WCS study found only 20% of the world’s tropical forests can be considered “intact,” these forests store 40% of aboveground carbon found in tropical forests. A 2011 study observed that intact tropical forests remove an estimated 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.
“The value of intact forests becomes clearer [as] we count toward the long-term 2050 milestone when humanity should be transitioned from net emissions to net sequestration,” Evans said. “Without keeping our intact forests, it will be impossible to implement our climate goals outlined in the Paris Agreement.”
But intact forests can’t sequester carbon if they’re felled. There were 549 million hectares (2.1 million square miles) of intact tropical forest remaining globally at the end of 2013, but that was down by 49 million hectares (189,000 square miles) compared to 2000.
And of course, since then ranchers, farmers, loggers, miners, dam and road builders, along with those participating in a myriad of other industrial activities, have degraded and cleared away more intact forests, and in many places at an increasing rate — removing opportunities for countries to capitalize on forest carbon sinks to counteract the climate crisis.
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