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Climate

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Tipping Point Ahead

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Video Credit: Leo Murray on Vimeo.

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Climate

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation

Forest cleared for Palm oil plantation, Tesso Nilo Plantation Riau, Sumatra, Indonesia
© Alain COMPOST / WWF-Canon

Forests are destroyed or degraded by activities such as logging and conversion of forest to agricultural land. These activities release large quantities of carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere becoming a significant source of GHG emissions and a contributor to climate change.

While reforestation is important and helpful for supporting reduced emissions in many places, stopping deforestation and forest degradations is more urgent from a climate perspective. It takes decades for a sapling to grow and absorb the amount of carbon that is released when a mature tree decays. Reducing deforestation and degradation is a highly cost-effective way of reducing GHG – one that can be done immediately if the drivers of deforestation are addressed strategically. If done right, it can also benefit biodiversity conservation and people.

Biofuels have been hailed as the solution to the environmental problems created by the use of fossil fuels. A closer look, however, has begun to reveal significant impacts of this rapidly emerging industry. A new study, "Biofuel Plantations on Forested Lands: Double Jeopardy for Biodiversity and Climate" , co-authored by Dr. Neil Burgess of WWF, revealed it would take at least 75 years for the carbon emissions saved through the use of biofuels to compensate for the carbon lost through forest conversion. If the original habitat was carbon-rich peatland, the carbon balance would take more than 600 years. On the other hand, planting biofuels on degraded Imperata grasslands instead of tropical rain forests would lead to a net removal of carbon in 10 years. The study is the most comprehensive analysis of the impact of oil palm plantations in tropical forests on climate and biodiversity.

Over 32 million acres of tropical forest is lost each year to deforestation. Photo from Atlantic forest, Una Biological Reserve, Bahia, Brazil.
© Edward PARKER / WWF-Canon

WWF believes it is necessary for the post 2012 Global Climate Agreement at Copenhagen to include mechanisms that recognize and provide incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), while ensuring that REDD-related emissions are truly additional to industrial emission reductions. WWF is supporting REDD activities in developing countries, including capacity building. WWF is also developing high standards for REDD initiatives to ensure that they are sound and well-implemented, benefit local livelihoods, and respect the rights of indigenous people and other local communities.

Countries need to develop national frameworks to tackle forest-based emissions. There must be sufficient resources provided to address the drivers of deforestation. Developed countries must help by providing resources, including technology transfer. And provision must be made to ensure that as countries with high deforestation rates implement REDD initiatives, countries which up till now have low deforestation do not begin to cut their forests. These countries should be given incentives to protect their forests as they are likely to face increasing pressure to deforest with the shrinking supply of forest products.

WWF has also initiated pilot projects in key regions of the world to better understand the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and test methods for managing forests to resist these impacts.

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