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.)
Hi Gary, great questions! I would recommend these research articles that go into your questions in more depth.
1. The introduction to this article on natural climate solutions breaks down the numbers on how forests and other natural climate sinks absorb carbon emissions and the potential for their mitigation potential. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1710465114
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.)
Hi Gary, great questions! I would recommend these research articles that go into your questions in more depth.
1. The introduction to this article on natural climate solutions breaks down the numbers on how forests and other natural climate sinks absorb carbon emissions and the potential for their mitigation potential. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1710465114
2. This is a great point and I wish that we could have expanded on this more in the shorter piece. Indigenous communities are critical stakeholders in the solution. I found this article from the Paulson Institute helpful when researching this space in digging into the complexities you are alluding to. https://www.paulsoninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FINANCING-NATURE_Full-Report_Final-with-endorsements_101420.pdf