Forests Could Be Used to "Mask" Emission Reduction Goals, Report Finds

Nations might utilize forests to ‘camouflage’ required reductions in emissions, according to a report.

New research released on Thursday indicates that major economies are exaggerating the amount of carbon that their forests can sequester as part of a deceptive climate accounting practice. This misleading approach might enable these countries to justify increased usage of fossil fuels.

Researchers remain uncertain about the response of carbon sinks as global temperatures rise in the coming years and precisely how effective they will be at absorbing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air.

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The evaluation specifically called out Brazil and Australia, and cautioned that without regulations governing how forests and other land-based carbon reservoirs are accounted for, nations might be able to "manipulate the system" when submitting their national greenhouse gas emissions reports.

Researchers remain uncertain about the response of carbon sinks as global temperatures rise in the coming years, and precisely how effective they will be at absorbing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air.

However, this hasn’t prevented nations from forming their own hypotheses and incorporating these figures into their national climate strategies. These plans aim to be completed by 2035 ahead of the subsequent UN climate discussions scheduled for Brazil in November.

Climate Analytics, an independent policy research organization, stated that the excessively hopeful estimates regarding forest carbon sequestration were "obscuring the magnitude and speed of reductions in fossil fuel emissions that are actually required."

This masked the actual effort required to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, as outlined in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

In the most recent iterations of its climate strategy, Australia relied extensively on forests to decrease its carbon output, which effectively meant reducing actual emission reductions by 10 percent, according to Climate Analytics.

Meanwhile, Brazil has declared its commitment to reduce emissions by 59 to 67 percent compared to the 2005 levels by the year 2035; however, it hasn’t specified how much forests will contribute towards achieving this target.

Climate Analytics stated that setting the target in this way would enable Brazil to potentially let its energy emissions increase twofold.

"If forest utilization is not an option, then all efforts must come from the energy sector," stated Claudio Forner, a co-author of the recent study conducted by Climate Analytics.

However, if you utilize all the forests, the emissions could keep increasing.

He stated that the issue emerged due to the Paris climate agreement permitting nations to devise their own estimates of how much CO2 would be sequestered by their territories.

Forner told AFP, 'When there are no regulations, nations simply manipulate the system.'

- Assuming growth -

Even though forests will play a key role in worldwide initiatives to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, these figures ought to be reported independently and shouldn’t be utilized as “compensation” for emissions from energy production and industrial activities, he stated.

This is due to the fact that the intricate mechanisms through which forests and other land sinks sequester carbon are not as comprehensively grasped as the impact of fossil fuels in exacerbating climate change.

The carbon held within trees may return to the atmosphere through events like wildfires and various natural processes.

Concerns have been raised about how climate change along with other anthropogenic influences might be diminishing the capacity of forests and soil to absorb carbon dioxide.

Forner stated that science isn't clear about how the carbon sink will act moving forward.

“And if scientists haven’t, I’m certain that most governments haven’t done so either; however, they continue to rely on assumptions of perpetual expansion for their projections. Should these presumptions prove incorrect, it would result in a shortfall.”

Climate Analytics has previously calculated that this uncertainty might be as high as three billion tons of carbon dioxide, which is approximately equal to the annual emissions output of Europe.

United Nations climate specialists have voiced extensive worries over a considerable disparity regarding how nations report land usage in their climate strategies compared to the approaches utilized by scientists. They suggest this gap might amount to approximately 15% of worldwide emission levels.

According to their report from last year, attempting to harmonize various accounting systems for CO2 emissions and absorption related to land use indicates that we now have even less time than was anticipated earlier to achieve net-zero emissions globally.

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