Climate Policy & Science

Forests, through the process of photosynthesis, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as biomass. This process is referred to as carbon sequestration.  The rate of carbon sequestration is related to the rate of tree growth and is dependent on many factors including the tree species, rainfall, access to moisture movement in the soil and soil conditions. The accumulative effect of carbon sequestration in forests is responsible for them functioning as carbon 'sinks'.

The recognition and requirement that forestry and avoiding deforestation play an important and crucial role in global climate policy is now clear. There is a large and growing global demand for carbon-emission reductions, with the US Department of Energy predicting the U.S. demand alone for forest carbon offsets could grow by at least 100 times by 2020.

This was emphasized by the Copenhagen Accord where the support of forestry was widely seen as the major positive development of the Accord.

Point 6: Copenhagen Accord

“We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries.”

Forestry Carbon Reduction Benefits

  • The generation of carbon-emission reductions through forestry is significantly less capital intensive then technology (renewable energy) based projects and more highly scalable.
  • Forestry creates additional emission reductions whereas renewable energy initiatives only create carbon offsets on the basis that they are preventing CO₂ from being emitted (rather than an actual reduction in CO₂ ).