By protecting currently degraded land and allowing natural regrowth to occur, committed land could sequester 1.4 tons of carbon dioxide per acre annually, for a total of 54.5–85.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050.
Stella, thanks for this informative post. I had a few questions:
1. With increasing evidence that stressed forests in different parts of the world (e.g., the rapidly depleting forests here in British Columbia and the Amazon) are losing their ability to capture carbon and becoming net carbon emitters, what does that mean for the future? So many “commitments” rely on the simple logic of trees + air = less carbon; what happens in a world where that is no longer true?
2. The argument that these lands can be returned to productive forests seems to be a vast oversimplification of the situation—how do the intersecting needs and wants of Indigenous rights holders, capitalist industry, and small- or large-scale landowners come into the picture here? What is an achievable approach to produce significantly larger tracts of protected forest in a world where land is a commodity that people fight for and steal? (Sharply illustrated by the aggressive increases in Amazon deforestation on Indigenous land in the Bolsonaro era—land deliberately set aside for protection is being slashed and burned for pasture by angry cowboys.)
How Forests Fit into the Climate Solution
Stella, thanks for this informative post. I had a few questions:
1. With increasing evidence that stressed forests in different parts of the world (e.g., the rapidly depleting forests here in British Columbia and the Amazon) are losing their ability to capture carbon and becoming net carbon emitters, what does that mean for the future? So many “commitments” rely on the simple logic of trees + air = less carbon; what happens in a world where that is no longer true?
2. The argument that these lands can be returned to productive forests seems to be a vast oversimplification of the situation—how do the intersecting needs and wants of Indigenous rights holders, capitalist industry, and small- or large-scale landowners come into the picture here? What is an achievable approach to produce significantly larger tracts of protected forest in a world where land is a commodity that people fight for and steal? (Sharply illustrated by the aggressive increases in Amazon deforestation on Indigenous land in the Bolsonaro era—land deliberately set aside for protection is being slashed and burned for pasture by angry cowboys.)