Region Archives: International

Our forestry industry is the underutilised tool in the lowering greenhouse gas emissions kit. The “net” in net zero emissions describes our aspiration to put no more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than we take out. Our forests absorb and store carbon, lots of it. Post-harvest, the carbon remains trapped in the wood products we manufacture from the logs. If we are serious about tackling climate change, we need to focus more on the greater role our renewable forest industries can play. This is acknowledged in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is another case for providing more support to the forest and forest products sectors. They create lots of jobs, around 80,000 of them directly, and another 160,000 indirectly: in forest management, harvesting, haulage, sawmilling, manufacturing, wholesale, retail, and construction. The modern forestry sector is both sophisticated and high-tech.

Over 170 non-government organisations worldwide have been taking action today – the International Day of Action on Big Biomass – to highlight the impacts of biomass energy, a false solution to climate change that actually emits as much or more CO2 as burning coal. A colourful wave of activities, organized by the Biomass Working Group of the Environmental Paper Network (EPN), has moved around the world – starting in Australia and traveling via Asia to Africa and Europe, then to the Americas. …170 NGOs from 40 countries are signatories to the EPN Biomass Delusion position statement on large scale forest biomass, which severely threatens the climate, biodiversity and vulnerable communities. Peg Putt, Coordinator, said: “Widespread concern about this fake “renewable” should be heeded by the UN climate conference, which can and should fix the root cause of the problem – the notoriously flawed accounting rules that enable a false impression of carbon neutrality to be perpetrated. 

Putting land use issues, including deforestation, reforestation and restoration front and center at the U.N. COP26 climate summit in Glasgow is without a doubt a positive and important move, said Robert Nasi, of CIFOR-ICRAF. The remarks were delivered in response to a report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper which stated that an agreement and new funding to stop forest loss and degradation will be announced at the summit. “We need to leave fossil fuels in the ground, move to renewable energy, while removing perverse financial incentives, such as subsidies,” Nasi said. “Stopping deforestation and protecting standing forests or reversing it through reforestation and landscape restoration can make a dramatic contribution to mitigating and adapting to climate change while helping to achieve biodiversity targets. …The focus by the UK COP presidency on forests and trees is crucial.

Drax has been booted from an investment index of clean energy companies as doubts over the sustainability of its wood-burning power plant begin to mount within the financial sector. The FTSE 100 energy giant, which has received billions in renewable energy subsidies for its biomass electricity, was axed from the index of the world’s greenest energy companies after S&P Global Dow Jones changed its methodology. The exit is a blow to Drax, which has vowed to become the world’s first “carbon-negative” energy company by the end of the decade. It comes amid growing scepticism about its green credentials after the financial services firm Jefferies told its clients that bioenergy was “unlikely to make a positive contribution” towards tackling the climate crisis. …The company claims that burning biomass to generate electricity is “carbon neutral” because the emissions are offset by CO2 absorbed when trees grow.

In the first half of November, all eyes and ears will be turned to Glasgow, Scotland, to see what will come out of the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26). Here, the international dialogue on climate change will share center stage with the Amazon rain forest, as the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA) launches its first report. …Convened by Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, SPA was conceived within the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “The main difference between the IPCC and the Science Panel for the Amazon is that the SPA has just the scientific, and not the intergovernmental, aspect as part of its nature,” explained Mercedes Bustamante, a professor at the University of Brasília in Brazil. Bustamante is a member of the SPA as well as a lead author of the IPCC’s Working Group III, focused on climate change mitigation.

New Zealand has jumped in boots and all replacing high carbon emitting coal boilers with cleaner ones powered by wood pellets. Hospitals, schools and our second biggest carbon emitter Fonterra were making the switch to put a dent in our carbon emissions from coal. But some were labelling wood pellets as a backwards move, that would slow down our progress on becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Renewable energy expert professor Andrew Blakers from the Australian National University, described them as an expensive detour on the road to a clean energy future. …He said another problem with wood pellets was they depended on the felling of pine trees every 20 to 30 years. …However Massey University’s professor emeritus Ralph Sims, said wood pellets did have a role, especially at filling the gap between now and when cheap renewable energy became available.

For countries that are committed to protecting and managing their forests and reforming agricultural production systems, a strong assurance of international carbon finance could be transformative. Success in delivering one gigaton of emissions reductions will serve to catalyze more large-scale private and public funding commitments while contributing to the 2030 mitigation goals and delivering an array of non-carbon benefits. …Achieving the full mitigation and biodiversity potential of forests suffers from a “chicken and egg” problem. On the one hand, companies, enterprises and business corporations need confidence in the supply of high-integrity REDD+ credits will be available at scale. On the other, forest country governments need a signal that sufficient international funding will materialize to support large scale investments in forest protection.

By the power of sunlight, forests turn huge amounts of carbon in the air into food: sugars for themselves and leaves, bark and roots that feed animals and microbes. Respiration, which happens in the cells of all living things in the forest, releases energy from that food and carbon dioxide (CO₂) back into the air.  As the amount of carbon in the atmosphere rises, this eat-and-be-eaten cycle increases to keep up. Metabolically, trees are running just to stand still. In the course of all this cycling, forests are locking up the major part of the 33% of human-caused emissions removed from the atmosphere into the land each year.  …. Can the world’s mature forests stand these changing conditions and continue to offset some of our emissions from burning fossil fuels?  To find out, my colleagues and I at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Forest Research use a free-air CO₂ enrichment facility.