Reducing tropical deforestation by 50 per cent over the next century, would help prevent 500 billion tonnes of carbon from going into the atmosphere every year.
Credit: AFP
WASHINGTON: Tropical developing nations can help drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing their rate of deforestation, say climate scientists.
Reducing tropical deforestation by 50 per cent over the next century, would help prevent 500 billion tonnes of carbon from going into the atmosphere every year, the researchers said in a policy article published in the U.S journal Science.
Such a reduction in emissions would account for 12 per cent of the total reductions targeted by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the researchers said.
At its current rate, tropical deforestation releases annually 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere that would otherwise be absorbed by trees, making it a major contributor to global warming, they said.
Big reduction, low cost
The policy article was aimed to give scientific and technological backing to a two-year initiative launched by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, after a group of developing nations asked for a strategy to make forest preservation politically and economically attractive.
The researchers said the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (RED) initiative faces political challenges as many developing countries consider their tropical forests as a key economic resource.
But low-cost measures could be taken to convince developing nations to reduce deforestation, including, for example, by helping them evaluate the use of forests to focus clearing only in areas with high agricultural value, they said.
"It will require political will and sound economic strategy to make the RED initiative work," said Christopher Field, director of the Global Ecology Department at the Carnegie Institution in the Washington D.C., a non-profit, scientific research organization.
"But the initiative provides a big reduction in emissions at low cost," he said.
Do the numbers
According to IPCC numbers, developed countries would have to cut their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over 90% by 2050 to have a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous warming.
Nature absorbs about half of mankind's CO2 emissions, but that is expected to reduce 30% by 2030.
Nature partially takes CO2 out of the environment with plants that convert it into carbohydrates, and animals that convert it into tissue, bone, and shell. Both are examples of autotrophs, which produce their own organic compounds using CO2 from the air or water in which they live. To do this they require an external source of energy, and almost all autotrophs use solar radiation to provide this.
The GHG can reenter the atmosphere through decay or combustion.
The autotrophs that remove the most CO2 from the environment are trees on land, and phytoplankton in the ocean. Yet, neither removes the CO2 for long, before they die and it returns back into the air through decay. Besides, the expanding human population places land use for reforestation at a premium, while decaying phytoplankton depletes oxygen in the ocean, leading to dead zones and the production of hydrogen sulfide by bacteria.
Since mankind is unlikely to cut their GHG emission so fast and so severely that dangerous warming is avoided, the only other solution is to remove the CO2 from the air after it has been emitted. Since naturally evolved autotrophs (i.e. trees) do not remove the CO2 from the air fast enough, or keep it out of the air long enough, I suggest improving nature's ability with genetic engineering-perhaps seeding a GMO into the ocean.
Forests are being weakened by insects that have increased their range, lack of rainfall, heatwaves, and higher high temperatures caused by global warming, so deforestation due to forest fire is increasing. Frankly, I don't see a reversal of that trend. For example, the great pine forests of North America are being ruined by the Pine Beetle. Within the next few decades, they are going to be ripe for massive forest fires. Good luck curbing that massive deforestation in the making.
ecological energetics and C02 sequestration
Great argument. One point; autotrophs are living organisms which produce their own energy and only consume the products and energy of the photosynthetic process. Animals are ecological heterotrophs not autotrophs, whether at a primary or higher level of consumption.
trees store carbon dead in a table or alive in a forest
kut up our trees and you dont release karbon unless you burn them...
you actually allow more room for new trees to grow....
kurbing or not kutting up our trees is not the answer its just maintaing our karbon store or increasing it thats gunna bring the kredits in..
Ding dong the carbon tax is dead
Greenhouse Garnuts Greenpaper D E A D
gARNUT WAS USING OLD numbers..and hes an economist just like sturn not a scientist...
50% of just the forest found in SE Australia eat 80% of our emissions..
2 x 50% = 160% and were 60% over budget already and we haven't counted all the trees....
It actually looks like we will be net consuming 4 to 10 times our emissions by the time weve counted ALL the trees...
These over populated foreign polluters owe me big time karbon kredits
perhaps i'll get a guest maid and gardener and work 3 days and invest in new technology..caint wait for the karbon Kredits kevvie
91.5% of our 200 billion acres is unaffected by the plough 7% and we use less than 1.5% in urbanisation and these areas have trees toooooooooo.
Give me my Karbon Kredits NOW Klimate Kevvie....or give me a chainsaw
Stop Blaming the Poor
I find the author the this article to be erroneous in implicating that the blame of tropical deforestation should be placed on the nations in which this practice is taking place.
Poor people pollute much less than wealthy people, and actually suffer the consequences of environmental degradation to a greater extent than wealthier people. Poor nations with extensive forests are often pushed to clear-cut their forests by wealthy countries like the one in which the author of this article as well as myself and perhaps most of the people reading his article reside. The loaning countries and the IMF have malicious intentions and indeed expect the failure of poor countries to repay international loans, making them debtor nations. Industrialized countries therefore have the power to set up structural adjustment programs in debtor nations in which their environmental assets are destroyed as they are put to use making cheaper products for the industrialized countries.
We have long ago come to realize that deforestation causes major environmental problems. It destroys wonderful habitats that host a wide range of diverse species and their trees, which act as carbon banks and prevent the progression the detrimental effects of climate change. The only way to take action on this situation is to stop the desperate poverty of debtor nations that drives them to destroy these wonderful resources. Stop the structural readjustment programs and stop turning poor nations into debtor nations that are now worse off than before we started abusing their countries for our own benefit.