As the climate crisis intensifies, Russia is pinning its hopes on its vast forests to make up for its carbon emissions — the world’s fourth-highest — and even help the country become a global leader in carbon absorption. But the country’s substandard conservation and ineffective forestry practices, combined with the impacts of climate change itself, make it more likely that Russia’s forests will become a carbon source rather than a sink in the next decade. “If the trend of increasing wildfires continues … then within the next one or two decades, Russian forests will become a carbon source,” a Russian forestry expert said. And according to the expert’s estimates, about a quarter of all logging in Russia targets its largely untouched old-growth forests. …Researchers from the Moscow-based Izrael Institute of Global Climate and Ecology found that Russia’s greenhouse gas emissions appear to be higher than what its ecosystems can absorb.